Some Nights
by AuroraEli
Summary: With Elena gone, Damon and Stefan find themselves hauling the gang cross country in search of a safe house. What happens when grief spirals out of control? How far will they go to pick up the pieces? Set after 2x12. DEFAN/ and others to come. M for yummy Salvatore slashiness, sexiness, vampcest & mature themes..
1. Before It Began

___A/N: This takes place after 2x12 (The Descent) - after Rose's death, before Tyler's conversation with Jules. My first TVD story, so feedback and comments are very welcome and appreciated!_

_Pairings: Stefan/Damon and others in future chapters._

_Rating: M for brief violence, bloodlust and future sexual content._

_Disclaimer: I own nothing. These lovely characters belong to the awesome folk behind TVD – I'm just glad to borrow them to play with._

* * *

x x x

A light rain was falling through the murky windows of the Red Rum Motel – an intended joke, I guess, which unfortunately fell flat when the place was entirely congruent with the grim origins of its name. I could see it in the fading light coming through the unnamable stains on the glass from years of one-night tenants who had preceded us. I remember the rain, the accompanying chill and the pain as I sat digging for the hundreds of tiny shards of wooden shrapnel in my chest and belly. I remember the drinking glass my brother thrust in my hand, the rancid aftertaste of the warm amber liquid he'd found in the dead mini-bar and had me toss back the entire bottle of; the burn in my throat as he told me Elena was dead.

And then he was gone, too fast for even my senses to make out where or how, before his words sank in. And then they did.

I remember stumbling blindly after him, slamming into doors and walls and lockers, and eventually that damn termite-bitten corridor rail that broke under the impact, and had me falling eight stories and onto my face in the lot. The pain was instantaneous – and a blessed respite, as was the unconsciousness that immediately followed it.

But I woke up, of course. As I always do, clawing for awareness, though I never understand why afterwards. In a pool of vomit and blood I woke up and turned onto my back, feeling my neck and head sink back into the sticky, sour stuff with a faint sucking noise.

_Ah, Christ. Fuck._ A lingering soreness infiltrated my bones, but they didn't feel broken anymore. The physical pain was gone, and with it, my relief.

I looked at the just-lightening sky and realised it was almost dawn – I wondered vaguely how many times I'd drowned in my own vomit and come back. My head was still fuzzy; it had always surprised me that we could get drunk. You would have thought accelerated healing might extend to digesting alcohol before it invaded the bloodstream, but no. An oversight of our mythology if ever there was one. Why in hell was I laughing? Where the hell was Damon? Where was everyone else?

It didn't matter, I supposed. Elena hadn't gotten to say her goodbyes; I could forgo mine, too. I closed my eyes and pulled off my ring.

x x x

When I came to this time, it came as a surprise. I ran sore, itching fingers down my arms as the last of the burns faded from my skin. I stifled a curse: someone had saved me. I looked around – I was back in the Red Rum, only in a different room. Instead of the acid stench of vomit I smelled shampoo and laundered cloth: someone had bathed and changed me, and put me to bed.

"Hello, brother." He sat next to the bed, just beyond the headboard and out of my line of sight. "What, no hello kiss? And here I've been keeping such vigil."

"What the fuck, Damon?" My voice was hoarse. My throat was scratchy and sore. How far had the sun burned under my skin?

"I could ask you the same question. What the fuck were you thinking?"

"I'm sorry," I said, closing my eyes. "Let it go."

In a flash he was by the bed, hands on my throat pressing me into the mattress. "Let it go? My baby brother tries to kill himself, which is fine by me, except he decides to do it in the middle of the fucking parking lot of our motel. Leaving me as clean up crew. That's pretty goddamn high profile if you ask me, for a bunch of people trying to keep a low one."

"I said I was sorry."

"We're on the run, Stefan, in case you failed to notice."

I shook my head, looked up at him. "What's the point now?"

"The point is not all of us are suicidal. Not me, not all these idiots you had me drag out of Mystic Falls."

I covered my eyes with one hand. "I'm sorry." And this time I meant it. Grief, unbidden, welled up again, and it was all I could do to let it. My hoarseness was nothing to do with my burns. "They were vampires, for Christ's sake, Damon. How can she be dead?"

He ignored this. "You know, there are far less slipshod ways of ending yourself that _don't_ involve me getting caught. I'd be happy to demonstrate." His fingers tightened on my windpipe.

"Get your hands off me."

"Really."

"Get your fucking hands off me." I took his wrist and twisted it hard enough that his elbow wrenched. He backed away, holding up both hands.

"Alright. Keep your panties on. Thought you had a death wish, is all."

Footsteps in the corridor signalled company just before the door opened to admit Matt and then Caroline, who stopped short at the sight of me, then came over in a rush of tears and flying hair, landing hard and throwing her arms around me, sobbing repeatedly, "You're okay, I'm so glad you're okay."

Overcome and bewildered by the outpouring, I simply stroked her back. Mumbled soothing things. Eventually she lifted off me and sat back on the sheets, subjecting me to scrutiny with that frank gaze of hers. "_Are_ you okay?"

I opened my mouth, but couldn't find a truthful answer that would satisfy her, and we were thankfully interrupted by the arrival of the rest: Bonnie, Jeremy, Alaric, Tyler – all of whom I'd dragged out of Mystic Falls. Torn from their home and their lives. All of whom Elena had wanted me to keep safe. The very thought of her made me want to push it all away, to turn it all off – or, even better, to join her – but the alcohol had gone, and with it the sweet relief of self-interest. My grief – what a strange word, to encompass what I felt, such a _common_ word – had to wait. Dying was too easy: Elena had left me a responsibility.

Klaus was after us. Elijah was after us. The werewolves were after us. Rose had said something to Elena before she died – something about fighting instead of giving up, and for some godforsaken reason it had struck a chord with her. And it had all gone to shit from there. Someone had shown up at the house, compelled, and shot first Jenna and then himself through the head. The werewolves had come for us, seeking vengeance for what we'd done to Mason. Matt had been attacked. He'd had a hard time coming to terms with everything when Elena had revealed to him her – our – secrets. And she'd decided to run. I supposed I should be grateful – at least it'd cured her of her martyr streak and given us a little more time together. Together, hiding out in motels, afraid, on the run – for a few weeks. And ultimately dying anyway, only not on her own terms. Yes, I supposed I should be grateful.

Like Rose before her, and Trevor; like Katherine, she had decided to run, and when Damon and I hadn't been able to talk her out of it – when, in fact, she had given us the slip and taken off on her own – we did the only thing we could have: protect her. Except we hadn't.

"I can't believe she's gone," said Caroline, softly.

Matt put his head in his hands. "And we only made it to – oh, God, we didn't even make it to D.C."

Damon smiled, coldly. "What's the matter, Matt? Montclair not doing it for you? Not loving the high life on the I-95?"

"Are you making fucking jokes, man?" Matt lurched towards him, fists raised, and Alaric tried to restrain him, but neither he nor the kid had a chance. Damon had Matt in a stranglehold before he was halfway across the room. He clutched at the vice-like forearm around his neck, gasping for breath as we all jumped to our feet – when, all of a sudden, Damon let go and fell to the floor, groaning, gripping the sides of his heads with both hands. Matt stumbled free, and all eyes turned to Bonnie, who was staring at Damon, spelling her aneurysms, advancing on him.

"Alright," I said. "Enough."

"That's right," said Bonnie, releasing him from the spell. "That's enough. Elena is dead," she said, her voice breaking on the word. "We need to stop doing this."

"You little bitch," snarled Damon from the floor. "I'll kill you myself."

Bonnie raised a finger in warning, and Damon kicked the footboard of the bed in frustration. "You watch your back, witch."

"You watch yours, if anyone else gets hurt again."

"I've heard that before."

"Stop! Please, just stop." Jeremy came between them as Bonnie started forward, his eyes red from crying. "This is crazy. This isn't the time for this." He kneeled in front of Damon, surprising us all. "I saw them, Damon, it was vampires. Why would they have killed her? Klaus needed her alive. What happened?" My brother said nothing. "Come on, you at least owe us that much."

"Fuck you, Gilbert. I don't owe you anything."

"Damon." Alaric shook his head warningly.

"She was my sister."

Damon looked at Jeremy for a moment, then at me, and climbed up off the floor and sat back in his chair by the headboard.

"She's dead. What do you want me to say?" he said, acidly. I knew my brother: his pain poured sharply into my awareness. "You know what happened. They came for us, we all scattered. They were Klaus' lackeys, by the way. I got that much out of them." He laughed, without humour. "I was feeling pretty damn good about it. Staked the three goons I tortured it out of. Conquering fucking champ. And then…" His eyes became vacant. "I went looking for the others. Pulled a couple off Rick. And then…I found Elena. Cornered. She stabbed herself," he said, wonderingly, as though he couldn't comprehend his own words.

"What?" My own voice was a raw whisper.

He looked at me, and I saw the grief and confusion plainly on his face, a mirror for mine. "That's not possible, Damon."

He nodded. "And yet the fact remains."

"Why?" whispered Bonnie. "Why would she have done that?"

"Because she was a fucking martyr, Bonnie. She led us all on this merry chase only to end up doing exactly what she wanted to do in the first place: die."

"And get Klaus off our backs," said Jeremy.

"Ten points to the kid." But his voice was no longer hard.

"Except for the fact that – I'm sorry, but someone's gotta say it – that by dying now," said Tyler, holding up a hand in apology, "she's really fucked up his plans. Hasn't she?"

Damon stared at his hands. "She has."

"And this Klaus guy is meant to be like, a vengeful a-hole on crack, isn't he?"

I nodded. "He is. So we've got to keep moving." Seven faces turned to me in surprise. "We won't be safe till we reach Rochester."

"You still want to go to the safe house?" Bonnie was incredulous. "Elena's gone."

"And I made a promise to her. To keep you safe. That doesn't change. We've been delayed here for long enough already–"

"You're welcome, brother."

"–Thanks to me, I know. I'm sorry. I wasn't in my right mind last night. Klaus will find out soon, if he hasn't already, and they'll be coming for us. We've got to move."

x x x

I smelled the blood from a mile away. It curled into my nostrils, clinging around my consciousness like a fog, clogged my senses, flooded my awareness with nothing but the scent and the sound of its warm, luscious pulsation. Fresh. I followed it like a lost animal.

It didn't take long to find. Damon squinted up at me, wincing in the sunlight pouring in from the open door of the motel basement, where he was crouched in the darkness. A girl lay in his arms, naked, blonde, dazed and languid, smiling, moving slowly against him, red smeared across her throat and chest as he drank from and caressed her; another was propped against the wall behind him, bleeding and already unconscious.

I sucked in air through useless, constricted lungs, a human instinct that never quite faded. "You can't do this, Damon," I breathed, fighting to get myself under control.

"Yeah?" The euphoria, the challenge in his feed-reddened eyes, in his bloodied grin, in the taunting thrust of his hips, was almost irresistible. "Come on in and stop me."

Their heartbeats pounded in my ears, called to me: I was conscious of pleasure that they were alive – dizzying – but the pleasure came from the fact that it meant flowing blood. Warm, pulsating, metallic. Sickened and overwhelmed, I turned away. I thought of Elena's blood – God, I thought of Elena – and the agony of her loss sliced through the bloodlust like a balm.

I sped down the steps towards the girls, breaking the skin on my wrist, rubbing it desperately into both their mouths, needing their wounds to heal - for my own preservation as much as theirs. Snatching them into my arms, I fled the basement, and deposited them hastily in the relative privacy of the motel's laundry room. Damon didn't try to stop me.

x x x

"Big fuckin' hero, huh? So what are you, like, field leader now?"

I turned from taking inventory of our weapons supply to find Damon lounging against the doorframe, clothed and cleaned. I went back to my work.

"Seriously? You couldn't find another room?"

"Oh, I could. Just wanted to spend some time with my baby bro."

"Afraid of the dark, Damon? Oh, wait."

"Relax. I was going to patch them back together anyway."

He came over to where I was crouched by the bed, and stooped till he was level with me. I cleared my throat. "Something I wanted to ask you. What–" I swallowed. "What happened to her body?"

He pursed his lips. For a second I thought he wasn't going to answer. "I don't know. I got in there and checked that she was – you know. Then more vampires showed up, and by the time I was done with them and got back to her, she was gone. I figure they took her body back to Klaus as proof."

"Looks like it." I nodded.

"So," he said, watching me examine some of Alaric's newer inventions, "when are you going to give up the tough guy act?"

"I don't know, Damon. Maybe when my big brother shares my motel room and shows me the concern he hasn't shown me for a hundred and forty-five years. Maybe then."

"Who are you trying to kid? It's me. You trying to pretend you've turned it off? Doesn't work that way, Stef. You turn one part of your humanity off, you turn it all off – and yet here you are, still trying to road trip the bunch of them away from their inevitable death."

"I'm dealing with it. The best I can. Don't overanalyse it."

"And when you finally go off the deep end and leave me high and dry babysitting the Scooby gang? Can I analyse it then?"

"Back off, Damon."

"It's Elena."

"Hey." I rounded on him. "I get that you're in pain. Don't put it on me."

"_I'm_ in pain? You were a blistering hunk of raw flesh when I found you this morning in the lot."

"I said back off."

His eyes snapped to Alaric's stake gun, which I hadn't realised I was holding up, pointed at his heart. Delicately, he directed the tip of it away with an index finger.

"Alright. Go ahead, little brother. Deal away. And when the time comes, you can be sure I'll be right there saying I told you so."

x x x


	2. On The Road

x x x

Caroline yanked up her jeans one-handed, what with the other occupied in being clamped firmly against her nose. A heightened sense of smell was _not_ a perk when one was using a gas station porta-potty. She sped out of the cubicle to do up her buttons away from the stench. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Tyler watching her as he stepped out of the store, but when she looked up, he glanced away and headed back to the car.

She didn't know what else she could do. Tyler wasn't one to hold grudges: he was passionate and he was fierce and he was impulsive and – let's face it – he could be an ass, but after the red mist cleared from his vision he was really a bit of a sweetheart. Just a bit of a boy. She knew this for a fact, and the knowledge had taken root somewhere deep in her bones as she'd held his shaking form the dawn after his first transformation. She'd countered his horror with soothing nonsense, told him he'd be okay, and as the sun had risen they'd both begun to believe it.

No, Tyler wasn't one to hold grudges, but here he was, avoiding her like the plague. Sure, fine, it wasn't like the murder of your uncle was something you could just snap your fingers and get over, but honestly, Tyler hadn't even known the man that well. And if he wanted to be mad he ought to be mad at Damon, not her - what, he was going to condemn the entire vampire race now? It wasn't like she blamed _him_ for some other werewolf attacking Matt. And, God, even Matt had rallied after being attacked, he'd been so great – and even Alaric was…well, alright, maybe Alaric wasn't doing so great. And none of them had been the same since Elena had…well. Caroline felt the sudden sting of tears behind her eyes. She didn't know what she was doing anymore; everyone was angry and exhausted and fighting and at breaking point, and the only thing to do was keep moving. Bethesda today, Heaven knows where tomorrow. She prayed every night, only half jokingly, that she'd wake up to find it was all a bad dream, that she'd be back in Mystic Falls, back on the student council, supervising the dance committee (God, she hoped they were doing a good job with proposals for the next decade dance – though, yes, she reminded herself, it didn't matter now, didn't matter). She hated being out of control, and people were dying – _Elena_ was gone – how could Elena be gone? – and everything was falling apart.

Why, why was he acting out at her? It was so confusing, especially when he'd kissed her - why, for goodness' sake, had he kissed her? Boys were impossible, whether one was a teen _or_ a vampire. All over her one minute and then frosty the next. Why did they do that?

x x x

"Hey. You sure you wanna be doing that?"

Alaric looked up from the pocket he was trying to pull his wallet from, and then from Stefan to the bottle of whiskey he was holding. He smiled thinly. "Yup. Yup, I'm pretty sure I am."

Stefan leaned on the counter and nodded towards the cashier. "Okay."

Alaric eyed him as he placed the bottle by the till. "Okay." He fished out some cash, aware of Stefan's eyes on him. "You got something to say, there?"

"Nope. Nothing."

"Good." He nodded. "Good."

"Good."

Alaric stashed the money back in his pocket, still nodding. "Nothing about how I'm on driving duty for the next three hours, and how I've got Jeremy in the backseat, who just lost his sister, and who lost his parents in a car accident. Even though it's the first damn place with a hard liquor license for miles. Nothing like that, huh?"

"Hey, what can I tell you."

"Son of a bitch." Alaric took the whiskey and disappeared behind the shelves, returning a minute later with a six-pack of cheap beer and a tub of Chunky Monkey. He held them up with an ironic flourish. "Good for all the family."

x x x

"Elena, Jenna, my parents…I don't know how much more of this I can take, Bonnie." Jeremy looked away, out of the car window. He'd been crying too much, he knew it, but he couldn't turn it off. For the first time in a long while he felt sixteen: he was just a boy, and he felt it. When his parents had died he'd had Elena by his side; now he was all alone, and all he wanted was the one thing he couldn't have: his big sister. He was scared, and the shame of it burned through him every moment. "We're not going to get out of this. You know that, right?"

"You don't know that."

"How can you think any different?" His voice was full of unintended scorn, and he made no effort to gentle it. "You think your magic's going to make any difference? We're up against the oldest vampire of all time, Bonnie. And all the witches and warlocks and other vampires he's got fighting for him, including Elijah. There isn't even an agenda anymore, nothing we can trade or…or use to make a deal. He just wants us dead. Failing Klaus there's the werewolves waiting to do us in – and they nearly succeeded with Matt."

He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cool window, feeling Bonnie's hands on his shoulders, rubbing, comforting. "I don't even know if it's right to mourn her. If it was her choice – I think…I've been thinking maybe Elena had the right idea. None of us are going to make it. Why not do it on our own terms?"

Bonnie was silent. He glanced uncertainly back at her, trying to gauge her reaction, and found her looking at him with fear in her eyes. "Jeremy, you can't talk like that."

"Yeah, well, I just did."

"Hey, whoa, am I interrupting something?" Matt paused with a hand on the door handle, peering at them through the open window.

"No, man, come in," said Jeremy, grateful for the interruption. But Bonnie wasn't to be deterred.

"Jeremy, promise me you won't do something stupid."

"Well, define 'stupid'."

"How about 'anything that involves doing what you just threatened to do'?"

"What, kill myself?"

Matt whipped round. "What?"

"Yeah, that's right. Kill yourself."

"Jer," said Matt, "I'd put that very solidly under the category of stupid."

Jeremy looked at them both for a long moment. "You mean just like Elena was?"

Matt looked like he'd been punched in the gut, and Bonnie bristled. "Don't you turn this around on us. Listen, Elena died to protect us. Protect you. Killing yourself means she died for nothing."

"We're not exactly out of danger, Bonnie. I think we can establish that she _did_ die for exactly that."

The force of Bonnie's slap was hard enough to whip Jeremy's face towards the window.

"Ow, what the hell?" He cradled his cheek and glared at her - only to find her glaring right back. Her voice shook with anger.

"Number one: you do not talk about Elena like that. Number two: I'm not going to see you go down this road again. Not after what Elena went through to pull you out of it the first time."

"What Elena went…you're kidding me, right? She got Damon to erase–"

"Yeah, erase your memory, I know, we've all heard the story. I know. You think I can't see you're scared? You think this bravado is less pathetic, is that it? Pushing everyone away, lashing out, demeaning your sister? Let me tell you something, Jeremy Gilbert, you couldn't be more wrong. We're all scared. Being scared isn't pathetic. But this is." She waved a hand at him, encompassing him in his entirety. "And you'd better snap out of it."

Jeremy nodded, the tight ball of anger in his belly spreading through him. "Or what?" He knew he sounded like a child; he didn't care.

"Or we'll put you in the naughty corner. Or maybe we'll be disappointed in you, whichever parenting style is in vogue these days." Damon's voice dripped with irony as he appeared, tapped impatiently on the window and gestured towards the road. "Come on. Time to go. No more Days of Our Lives in there."

x x x

I took the wheel on the drive up towards Hagerstown. We'd had a bitch of a fight among the group of us about which route to take: Damon wanted to stay on the interstate and head straight up to New York, get the most mileage out of the daylight and get through the nights quicker. I didn't like the idea. Klaus knew we'd been in Montclair, he'd have people scouring the area by now. I wanted to stay out of the big towns, keep to smaller roads, take a more winding journey up.

We'd been wasting valuable daylight arguing by the side of the road, so eventually we compromised: we were staying mostly on the interstate in the day, and heading off onto small roads in the night. But one thing was agreed: we kept moving till we made it to Rochester. It wasn't far now.

"What makes you so sure they'll take us?" Damon's voice broke into my reverie. I frowned at him, glancing in the rearview mirror to indicate company.

"Relax, they're asleep." And they were, Caroline's head pillowed on Tyler's shoulder.

I studied them for a moment. "Do we need to be worried about them?"

Damon yawned. "We? No. You? Maybe. If I were you I'd worry more about Jeremy and the witch and whatever's going on there."

"And Alaric's seen better days."

"Yes, Stefan, we're all in a bad, bad place. It's tragedy and darkness all around. So what makes you so sure this safe house is going to be the answer?"

I sighed. "They'll take us."

Damon looked over at me. "So the bunch of us – spearheaded by a couple of vampires, I might mention – shows up on the doorstep of this house full of angry witches, minus one doppelganger, and they'll just welcome us in. Total strangers."

"That's the plan."

"And do rainbows and unicorns fly out of our asses in this plan, too? Look, this craigslist guy specifically said to bring the doppelganger. No doppelganger, no deal. His words."

I ignored this last part. "Craigslist. That was something, huh?"

He almost smiled. "Something, alright."

Before heading out of Mystic Falls, we'd tried to contact Cody Webber again for help – Slater's email contact that Elena had used to try and draw Klaus out with before, when she'd been out on her martyr campaign with Rose. Something that might point us in the right direction, or any direction at all. But we'd found him somewhat…less than cooperative, with what turned out to be his brothers having had their hearts ripped out by Elijah. He'd been in no mood to take the doppelganger alive, much less deal with her again; long story short, the whole thing had ended in an awful mess of flames and stakes in the cemetery.

_Fucking waste of space; with that kind of network, he sent his brothers? Who the hell sends their brothers into that kind of death trap?_ Damon had muttered between curses, dumping the bodies into the ground with satisfying violence.

_I can think of someone_, I'd said, watching him with a smile.

Cody Webber had been the only link in the chain we knew of; everything else, if it had existed, had been wiped from Slater's email account. So we'd been contactless, clueless, directionless, when suddenly Damon had remembered: craigslist. Slater had mentioned it when they'd met in the cafe. _I respond to a personal ad that gets sent to somebody who knows somebody who knows Elijah, who's dead and that's where my connection ends_, he'd said, and it had made me laugh to think that something that had seemed so dead-end was now our only light at the end of the tunnel. Life was funny that way. Or it had been: Elijah wasn't dead after all. And now Elena was. Funny just didn't factor in anymore.

So we'd spent days scouring craigslist – searching for Slater's name, his email address, searching for other possible keywords – Klaus, Elijah, vampire, curse, doppelganger, anything and everything, and nothing came up. And then, at the end of her rope, Elena had remembered something else: Slater's email password. _Kristin Stewart?_ I'd asked, incredulously. _Don't look at me_, she'd said, and in an hour she'd clicked through almost twenty pages of listings with variations of Kristin Stewart in the posts, and found one from a _cody.w210_, under _men seeking women_:

_Dating older people/ professionals? Exciting lewd games and naughty gambols etc. Reply._

I had been unconvinced. I'll be the first to admit I'd been unconvinced. Then Bonnie's eyes, narrowed to squints from days at the screen, had blurrily picked up on something: _**D**__ating __**O**__lder __**P**__eople/ __**P**__rofessionals? __**E**__xciting __**L**__ewd __**G**__ames __**A**__nd __**N**__aughty __**G**__ambols __**E**__tc. __**R**__eply._

_D.O.P.P.E.L.G.A.N.G.E.R._

We had all stared, dumbstruck, at the screen for long minutes before the incredulity had faded enough for speech.

"You gotta be _kidding_ me," Damon had said, and then shot a glance at Bonnie. "Okay, that was some witchy juju right there."

"Word searches," Bonnie had shrugged. "I'm addicted."

"She has books," Elena had volunteered, smiling for the first time in what had felt like forever.

"My question is, what do you think he did with the _rest_ of the replies?"

"This is just...wrong on so many levels." Caroline, like the rest, had not yet recovered.

"And yet _fantastic_," Damon had said, with a new light in his eyes. "We'll go through all the personals. See if there's anyone else involved in this. We'll split up the sections. Witch, you take _strictly platonic_, Elena, _women seek women_," – this, of course, had necessitated accompanying dirty eyes – "Barbie, _women seeking men_; Rick, _men seeking women_; quarterback, _men seeking men_ – nice – Jeremy's on _misc romance_, and Stefan and I will get started on the rest."

"We're looking for more of the same in listing titles," I'd said, "any first letters that you can string together into a word. Look out for something that sounds a bit off."

"Like 'naughty gambols'."

"Just like that."

And within the night I'd found something under _casual encounters_:

_Katie's lonely, as usual. Sex?_

"Klaus." Damon had taken the laptop from me, grinning as he clicked on the user's email address, opening up a new email on Slater's email account. "The bastards must have been having fun with this."

* * *

**From: **Slater Peterson

**Date: **Sep 25, 2010 11:45:01 PM

**To: **H. J. Gringich

**Subject: **Doppelganger

_I have her. Need help with transport. Meet me in Mystic Falls, keep it low key and come alone._

* * *

It hadn't been the best of emails – "come alone" could have justifiably set off all kinds of alarm bells, but the poor bastard really had come, and he'd come alone. Turned out Gringich had been Klaus' equivalent of Slater: a vampire almanac, except hardly as neutral and playing for the wrong side, and a little too cocky for his own good. Damon and I had covered the floorboards and the good furniture with some thick sheets, and spent the afternoon at the boarding house with him. Coaxing information out of him. By the end of it we'd had the smell of burning flesh throughout the house, sheets to bleach, a corpse to bury – and the location of a safe house.

Which we were now heading towards.

"Vampire almanacs fast becoming an endangered species," said Damon, following my train of thought.

"No thanks to us."

"None at all. So you going to answer my question, or what?"

"No, Damon, rainbows and unicorns will not fly out of our asses."

"Good to know. And then there's the small issue of us not having the doppelganger."

Casting a wary eye over Caroline and Tyler's sleeping forms once more, I turned to him. "What if we did?"

Damon winced, and closed his eyes briefly, as though my words caused him pain. "I think you're so sunk in your denial you've become delusional, brother. I'm not sure you're safe behind the wheel."

"I don't mean – I know she's – that's not what I meant."

"You know she's - what?"

"Damon."

"Go on, say it."

I shook my head, a little confused by his question and my own inability to answer it, and tried to keep the conversation on track. "Look. The witches in Rochester – Gringich said they're there because Klaus killed their families. Because they didn't want any part of this, because they refused to work for him. They don't deal with vampires, don't hang around with them, presumably aren't too interested in our mythology – or weren't, anyway, until Klaus came along. Number one. Number two, I know of only two portraits of Katherine ever taken: the one that I had, which is now ash, and the one Elena found in the Petrova book, which is now sealed in the tomb. The only people we've met so far who identified Elena as the doppelganger did it because they knew Katherine, and they've been around for hundreds of years. How likely is it that these Rochester witches are going to know what the doppelganger looks like, when hardly anybody else does?"

Damon was silent for a long moment. "That's a lot of assumptions, Stefan."

"I know."

"For Christ's sake, even Alice recognised her."

"Alice?"

"Slater's vampire-wannabe girl...friend...person."

"That was different, Slater was–"

"Yeah, an almanac, I know. Creeped the hell out of me when he recognised me. _Damon Salvatore, turned 1864 by Katherine Pierce._ What the fuck was that? But come on, Stefan, there are a million ways this could foul up."

"I know. Believe me. But if you have a better plan, please enlighten me. Because we're running on empty right now, and without the safe house we're fucked."

"So, say I'm on board with this," he said, slowly. "Just say. Who's to play the part? Bonnie? Blondie?"

I drummed my fingers on the wheel. "That's where I'm stuck. Even if they haven't seen a picture of her, it'd be idiocy to assume they haven't at least had a description."

"Long brown hair, skinny white girl," said Damon, checking his points off on his fingers. "Nope, low in stock on those right now, brother."

His words, though light, combined with my earlier confusion and sent a sharp pang of loss and longing through my chest. I clamped down on it, as I'd been doing since the Red Rum - and found that it was becoming almost impossible. My hands clenched on the wheel for an instant - of its own volition, some switch inside of me see-sawed...momentarily panicked by the grief clouding my senses, I said nothing, could say nothing.

I took a steadying breath till it passed, getting myself under control, not wanting Damon to see it, to start in on me again. But he was off in his own musings:

"Unless…"

I glanced over at him. I recognised that light in his eyes. "What?"

"I have a plan."

"I thought it was my plan."

"I'm commandeering the plan," he said, waving a dismissive hand at me. "But you aren't going to like it."

x x x

* * *

_A/N: Please leave a review and thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed :) Stay tuned for Damon's diabolical plan, more of Alaric and some proper bromance..._


	3. Come The Storm

_A/N: __Just a few warnings for the chapter: there's graphic ****__violence/bloodplay_, **_incest slash_** and **_sexual content_** up ahead, so please read only if you're okay with these.

_Also it's pretty long, and there is Stefan angst. Hope you enjoy and please review! ____Thanks so much for reading, following, favourite-ing and reviewing so far, makes a writer happy :)_

_Rating_:_ M for violence, sexual content and mature themes. _

* * *

_"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time...__it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others._

_And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."_

- Haruki Murakami, Kafka On The Shore

* * *

x x x

"Weren't we supposed to stop at Hagerstown?" Caroline's sleepy eyes widened as she raised her head off Tyler's shoulder - comfortable, she thought briefly - and took in the road sign flying past her window: Altoona.

"Decided to keep going. Enjoying the peace while you and wolf boy were out cold."

"Ha, ha." Caroline rolled her eyes, but the back of Damon's seat was unfortunately oblivious. "Well, we have to stop now. I have to pee."

"Jesus, didn't you just go? No, we'll carry on till we're in Bellefonte, at least. I'll be damned if we don't get to Rochester by tonight."

"You're damned anyway," said Stefan, then over his shoulder: "I'll pull over at the next gas station."

"Thank God." Squirming in her seat, she checked her cell: no signal. She really needed to get around to changing her provider one of these days. When all this was over, she supposed - and if cell phone coverage was still on her evolving list of priorities by then. "Call Bonnie and let them know, will you, Damon?"

"Yes, Miss Caroline," Damon muttered, fishing his out of his pocket and pulling up the number. "Blondie needs to pee," he snapped, when the call connected. "Pit stop up ahead."

"Thank you," she breathed in relief, and turned to find Tyler awake and watching her from beneath sleepy lids, the ghost of a smile playing around his lips. Her breath caught. God he had fine lips. Sculpted, like his jaw. But his lazy appreciation disappeared as soon as she spotted it, his face becoming closed as he looked away, abruptly and vividly reminding her of everything that had happened, and her own improving mood took a beating along with it. She retreated back into her corner of the backseat, mouth falling into the natural pout it took on whenever she was unhappy.

"And maybe we should rethink our seating arrangements when we're there," she said, sulkily, "since someone obviously doesn't want me in the same car as him."

x x x

Caroline's suggestion was met with rejection on all sides, from gentle to vehement. Personally I thought it was a pretty damn good idea: the thought of having three vampires and a werewolf in one car, and three humans and a very junior witch in another didn't sit well with me at all, not when we were liable to be under siege any minute. Alaric's Tahoe would be left pretty much defenceless. Damon agreed, in his own Damon way: if something happened to Matt or Bonnie, or even Jeremy and Alaric, it would seriously slow us down. Even if the two of them died rings-on it would take hours for them to come back.

Which was why, before setting out of Mystic Falls, we'd agreed that if the shit hit the fan, there would be no unecessary heroics: Matt, Jeremy, Alaric and Elena were to scatter and hide, and Bonnie too if her magic wasn't up to facing whatever it was we were facing.

"If I get stuck playing nursemaid because one of you was stupid enough to get yourselves partially eaten," Damon had said, "I'll finish the job myself - just to speed things up."

"What Damon _means_," Elena had interrupted, staring hard at each of us, "is that no one is going to be a martyr. That's the whole point. That's why I'm not leaving any of you behind. That's why we're all running together."

Which, in turn, was why I felt particularly ashamed of my drunken suicide attempt of the night before. Not so much because I'd wasted time (I hadn't expected to survive - or for Damon to actually play nursemaid), but because I'd tried to leave them behind.

And what about Elena? What had she been trying to accomplish, if not precisely what she'd forbidden us all to do? Hell, it was too soon, too raw, too much to hope to make any sense of it. I'd long resigned myself to the chaos of heightened emotions that were our curse. They were impossible now to distinguish from objective human ones. I was damned if I turned off my humanity, but humanity itself and all its accompanying baggage was a damnation all of its own. Something I read a couple of years ago, a book, contained a passage about a bloody storm that chases you. That is, in fact, inside of you, waiting to emerge and lay waste. It stuck in my head. It'd felt like a description of me. Of the storm inside of me that threatened always to boil over and erupt when - if - I lost control.

I had to get them to the safe house. That was the goal. Close my eyes, plug my ears, keep walking. Damon thought we could make it by tonight. By all accounts we could have made it yesterday, if Klaus' cronies hadn't attacked, if we hadn't gotten so badly torn up we'd needed to check in to a motel to recover, if Elena hadn't...God damn it to hell, I couldn't say it, couldn't think it, and damn Damon for pushing when I was hanging on by a thread. One more comment out of him and I wouldn't be responsible for my actions.

Except of course, I would be. I always was. Even when the bloodlust takes hold, when I'm out of my mind, possessed by the demon inside of me, the blood is still on my hands. Today it seemed I was having to remind myself of this every moment, like a mantra replaying in my head: I had to keep control. Control was all I had left.

Last night I'd been ready to die rather than lose it. I'd had no more strength, no more will, and as I'd lain dying at dawn it had seemed fitting - pleasing, even - that this empty shell was to join the soul so long departed from it. I'd been so self-indulgent, so unthinking, that I'd sought my own relief at the Red Rum with no thought of the others. Today, in the sober, bright light of day, strength and will hadn't quite returned. There was only the shame that I had been willing, content, to leave them all behind. It was this shame that kept me in check, that drove me on, held the storm at bay - for now. I was going to get them to the safe house. Beyond that...I didn't want to think about beyond that. I could only think about hanging on till then.

I watched Caroline's campaign for seat reallocation at the pit stop. Under any other circumstances I would have found it amusing, the gravity with which she undertook the task. Her pleas, bargains and eventual threats fell on deaf ears: Matt refused to get in a car full of vampires and since his attack he hadn't been able to look Tyler in the eye, Jeremy refused to get in a car with Damon; Bonnie wasn't keen either. Alaric wouldn't leave Jeremy, out of the oddly paternal feelings he'd developed for him - and for Elena - since Jenna's death, and Damon wouldn't leave Tyler because he wanted to keep an eye on him.

Eventually Damon got sick of the whole thing and ordered everyone back into the cars. And the backseat of our Camaro remained frosty cool.

x x x

We were making good time up to Bellefonte, and despite my brother's pessimism the rest of us were feeling pretty good about making it to Rochester within the day, maybe even before nightfall. I figured we'd get into town and lay low for a couple of days while we thought through our options. My plan to get into the safe house was half-assed, I knew it, but Damon seemed to have something up his sleeve – hell, the way he was all but humming with self-satisfaction in the seat next to me, he looked like he had it all figured out with a plot to end world hunger to boot.

He hadn't been at all put out by Caroline waking up and interrupting our conversation earlier. _And_ he'd circumvented all my attempts to get him alone at the gas station. _You're not going to like it_, he'd said. Probably wanted to keep me from asking questions as long as possible, the bastard.

"Do you think those witches up in Rochester are going to be alright with us showing up?"

Damn. Caroline was really sharper than people gave her credit for. And if Caroline was asking questions, I could only imagine the conversations going on in the Tahoe behind us.

"You know, she's right," Tyler said. "I've been thinking the same thing. Common enemy and all aside, I mean, they don't owe us anything."

"Right? They don't even know us. Why would they take us under their protection?"

Damon and I exchanged a glance, before that infuriatingly cool veneer of his slid back into place, and he opened his mouth to reply.

I never found out what he'd been about to say.

None of us were watching the road closely enough - none of us were prepared for the ambush. The tires exploded in a sudden confusion of banging and screeching, a brief metallic clinking, and the car ran off the road – as we skidded and the world upended, I thought fleetingly: it was almost worth it to see that damn look wiped off his face.

We landed with a impact hard enough to cave in the hood and most of the right side of the car, leaving me dazed and my leg crushed between a trio of the seat, the wheel and the door. _Shit_. Accelerated healing and all was fine and dandy, except I couldn't get out to do it. Caroline behind me in the backseat had fared better: Tyler had managed to pull her over to his side, and they were stunned but whole. Damon had his head in his hands, blood everywhere, but the nasty gash across his forehead was already healing.

"Are you okay? Is everyone – oh, my God, Stefan–" Caroline scrambled over to the driver's seat, and tried to wedge her arm in between the wheel and my thigh. "Help me!"

Damon and Tyler found my door stuck and tore it off its hinges from the outside. They reached in, and with the four of us pushing against the dashboard the metal lifted with a groan, releasing my crushed leg. I lay back with a grimace. "Ah, damn it. Thanks. Just - give me a second." Gritting my teeth against the pain, I lifted the mangled mess of bone and muscle that was my right leg up and out of the car, ripped the denim out of the way of the healing flesh. "The others?"

"Back there," Tyler pointed down the road where the Tahoe was stopped. "They stopped in time. Guess they saw us go flying."

Caroline frowned. "Why haven't they come over?"

Damon squinted at the car. His words chilled my blood. "There's no one in there."

"_W__hat_?"

He was by the Tahoe in a flash, shaking his head at us to confirm his words. "There's no one in the car."

The bitter disbelief that welled up within me sent me shooting to my feet and staggering the fifty or so yards over to the other car, Caroline and Tyler half-helping, half-dragging me. All four doors hung open uselessly, the seats bare, the only signs of a struggle four torn seat belts dangling limply from their hinges. They'd been that easy to subdue.

Damon kicked the side of the Tahoe, and kicked it again, denting the metal, cursing a blue streak. "Fucking stupid idea, to put them in one car."

"That's exactly what I said!" Caroline said, a little hysterically.

"You shut your damn mouth."

"Hey. Don't talk to her like that."

"I'll talk to her any way I want, wolf boy."

Tyler shoved Damon into the door of the car, and Damon grabbed his collar and slammed him back again it, his face inches from the kid's. "Give me a fucking reason. Just give me a fucking reason, especially after your _pack_–" he spat it out as if it was a bad word – "just tried to crush me in my own damn car."

I looked back over at the Camaro, burst wheels in the air, totaled beyond rescue, lying by the side of the highway that had been taking us towards safety – or as near safety as we could get, anyway. I couldn't believe it. Christ, we'd been so fucking close.

Something glinted in the road just before the wreck – a silvery line that ran all the way across the road, catching the sun. I limped closer.

It was a thin chain of silver, with a row of neat, sharp spikes sticking out of it, stretched taut from end to end of the road. Neat, and effective. It had taken out all four of our tires, created a distraction, given them enough time to attack the other car. I wandered closer. There was a piece of notepaper attached to one end of it, fluttering in the breeze.

"Are you crazy?" Tyler was saying. "You think this was werewolves? Have you forgotten what happened in Montclair? How do you know it wasn't more of Klaus' vampires?"

"It wasn't vampires," I said, and all three of them turned to me. I gestured at the late afternoon sky. "For one thing, it's still daylight. Sun's out. For another–" I held out the note:

_You want your friends. __We want Tyler Lockwood._

_Exchange at the Avalon Bar - when you're recovered._

"What the hell is this?"

I showed them the spiked chain, the way it had taken out the Camaro, freed them up to target the Tahoe. Tears of relief filled Caroline's eyes. "So they're not dead?"

"Doesn't look like it."

"Great," said Damon. "Perfect. They want Tyler Lockwood. We _don't_ want Tyler Lockwood. Let's go." He grabbed Tyler and pushed him into the car.

"Hey, wait, whoa – Damon, what the-"

Damon slammed the door against his protests. "Get in. Someone Googlemap this bar."

"Damon, Damon, stop. Think about this." Caroline rushed over, holding out her hands to him. "Come on. This could be a trap."

"Very likely."

"And we're just going to walk into it? How do you know–" she bit her lip, "how do you know they aren't already...dead?"

"That's a risk we'll just have to take, _Caroline_." He said her name as if she was a recalcitrant schoolgirl. He cocked his head. "Or don't you want your friends back? Sure would make things easier if Matt was out of the picture, huh?"

Caroline reared back like she'd been slapped.

"Enough, Damon." I stepped between them. "You know she's right."

"We gotta get them back, Stefan."

"You've been dying to get rid of all of us since before we set out," she flung at him. "Since when do you give a damn, anyway?"

"Part of the plan, sweetheart." He looked meaningfully at me. "We need them, or we're not getting into the safe house. Besides, we can take the wolves easy. Full moon's ages away. Best case scenario: we kill 'em all. We win."

Inside the car, Tyler leaned his head against the headrest and put his hands over his face. "It's not a trap," he said, his voice carrying through the three open doors.

Damon was inside and dragging him out of the car by his throat in an instant. "What do you know?"

"Let him go!"

Tyler struggled and gasped. "I – I'm – trying – to – tell – you – you – fucker–"

The grip on his throat lessened marginally. "So tell me."

"Back – back at home. Jules caught up with me – you know, Mason's friend. She told me...they were after revenge at first, but she told me about – fuck, this is gonna sound weird – about the werewolf code of loyalty. Pack loyalty. I'm more important to them than vengeance. They don't want me to be alone in vampire country. That's what she called it. They want me to go with them."

"_Pack loyalty?_"

"I swear, I know it's weird as hell, but it's true. I – I can feel it, too. I've seen them, you know, I've seen what they do, tearing people up, attacking my best friend, for God's sake, and they don't even try to control it like Mason did. Or like Caroline does. I know what they are – monsters – and I still feel it, this weird pull or whatever, to join them and be one of them. One of the pack. And it's strong. Truth is, it's why I ran. It was too hard to resist with them around. I – I was afraid...I don't want to be like that, like them. But the pull is there, I can't explain it. But believe me when I say they want me more than they want vengeance."

Damon released him, retracting his touch as if Tyler disgusted him. "_If_ that's true. One: that's fucked up. Two: doesn't mean they don't still want vengeance."

I guided Tyler away from him. "I agree. They want you, Tyler, but that doesn't mean they won't kill us once they have you."

Tyler was silent for a moment. "I'll go with them. On the condition that they leave all of you unharmed."

"What? No!" Caroline shook her head, coming over to him, taking his hands. "Tyler, no, no, God, you can't go with them. What will that do to you?"

"It's the only way no one gets hurt."

"_You_ get hurt! There has to be another way."

"Oh, there's a myriad of other ways," Damon chimed in, "all of which are satisfyingly bloodier."

I looked hard at Tyler. "Are you sure about this?"

He nodded, staring me right back in the eye. "I'm sure. They're on our trail because of me. Alaric, Jeremy, Bonnie, Matt – they got taken because of me. Let me do this."

"Tyler, please, don't–"

I took Caroline's chin between my thumb and forefinger, forcing her to look at me. "Hey. It's this, or a bloodbath, and people die. I can't guarantee none of us will get hurt. He'll be safe with them for now. He's right, Caroline. It's the best way."

"But–"

Tyler squeezed her hand and shook his head to halt her protests. She closed her eyes and walked into his arms, and he put them around her. "I hate this, I _hate _this," she whispered, against his shoulder. "We'll get you back, Tyler. I promise."

"I'll hunt you down, if you don't," he joked, shakily.

Damon groaned from his vantage point metres away. "I'm still going with kill them all."

"Let's–" I restrained Tyler, "let's...call that the failsafe. Last line of defence. Look, they know we're stronger, faster; they're clearly not stupid, they'll have some kind of defence set up in case we go in guns blazing. We're walking into their territory, they've got hostages, we're at the disadvantage. We have to play by their rules."

"To begin with."

It was as much of a concession as I'd get out of him. "To begin with."

"Fine. But if any of them tries anything–"

"I'm hardly noble enough to stand there and let myself be murdered, Damon."

This coaxed a dry smile from him. "One never knows with you, brother."

x x x

The Avalon Bar turned out to be a beat up old hole of a place in a dilapidated, out of the way and otherwise empty building, about fifteen minutes' drive from the interstate, though it took us longer to find. Redolent with stale cigarette and cigar smoke, it was nearly empty at this time of day except for a faded old guy nursing a glass of something in a corner. Or maybe it was always nearly empty, if the layers of dust on the tables and, more tellingly, the taps at the bar were anything to go on. I could believe it.

We spotted them as soon as we entered, sticking out like sore thumbs just like us – the pale one with the beanie, and the tall, dark one, good looking sort of guy with a mean streak. Elena had thanked God in her prayers it hadn't been him who'd gone after Matt. If he had, we'd be short a quarterback to save right about now.

_That one_, Damon had said, with something akin to admiration, _he'd have finished the job._

"That's Brady," Tyler muttered, low enough that I had to strain to hear, "and the twitchy one is Stevie." Brady cocked his head towards the back door, and the two of them got up from the bar and disappeared through it. We followed them - through it was a narrow, dirty, dark alley with a couple of other back doors peppered along the wall, none of which looked like they'd seen much use in the past decade, or more. On one end was a wall, and on the other was the pack. Jules, Brady, Stevie and a couple others.

"Aw, come on, Stefan," Damon said when he saw them, "there's like five of them. We can take them."

"Maybe," said Jules, smiling coldly, "and maybe not." She whistled, a high pitched whistle that reminded me – not completely inappropriately – of dog trainers, and eight or nine more werewolves appeared behind them, brandishing things ranging from stake guns to what looked like wooden vervain grenades to impressive-looking blowtorches.

"Okay, hey, down, girl," said Damon, holding up his hands, "I'm just the loose cannon. Ignore me. My baby brother here, he's in charge. And he comes in peace."

I nodded. "We all do. Where are our friends?"

"They're close by. If you hand Tyler over, you'll see them again. If you don't...well, I'll let you in on a little secret. Brady here, he likes when things get messy. So he's really hoping that you don't."

"Uh huh. Has it ever occurred to you the kid might not _want_ to go with you?"

"What my brother is trying to say," I said, with a quelling glance at him, "is maybe you ought to show Tyler the courtesy of asking him yourself. We're not holding him against his will."

Jules looked at Tyler as if this had, in fact, not occurred to her. An unexpectedly imploring note entered her voice, softening it. "Tyler, come on, come with us. It's where you belong."

"I will," said Tyler, and the way her eyes lit up, I really believed she wanted him more than anything else. "I will, but I'm sorry, I can't do that till I see my friends are safe."

"Your friends have thrown their lot in with vampires, kid," said Brady. "They deserve whatever's coming to them."

"Nothing is coming to them," said Tyler, staring at Brady, "nothing from you, anyway." To Jules - "They're my friends. I've known them since I was a baby, for God's sake. How can I come with you if you hurt them? Please. They're just people. They aren't the enemy. I'll come with you, but I want your word – all of you – that you won't harm my friends. _Any_ of them," he added, glancing meaningfully at the three of us.

Jules nodded in earnest. "Alright. Alright, I agree."

"Jules–"

"Brady," she said in a low, urgent voice, rounding on him. "I told you, the boy is more important. His loyalty to his friends...he has so much potential, Brady. And he's right: he should _want_ to come with us. I want to help him. We have to help him."

"Mason was–"

"It's what Mason would have wanted," she interrupted, and something seemed to pass between them which finally made an impression on him. She turned back to us, nodding. "You have my word. You have _our_ word."

Brady gestured at two of the werewolves behind them, speaking quietly, but not quietly enough that we couldn't hear. "You heard her. Bring them out."

Damon glanced over at me, eyes wide, eyebrows raised. _This code of loyalty thing is the shit, huh? _I could practically hear his voice in my head. I frowned at him. _Inappropriate_, I tried to convey. _Inappropriate as _always_._

"Bonnie! Matt!" Caroline was about to rush into the middle of the pack to get to them when they appeared, but thankfully Tyler had a death grip on her arm. Alaric materialised next, his arm around Jeremy, as if he could shield him from the wolves.

"Okay, kid, get over there." Damon gave Tyler a push. Their goodbyes were quick: Caroline repeated her earlier promise to him, quietly and into his ear. He closed his eyes, kissed her roughly on the forehead, and walked away to join the pack.

Our friends were released and ran stumbling over, the kids meeting Caroline in a four-way embrace. But Alaric grabbed Damon's shoulder. "What the hell's going on? Tyler's going with them?"

"We'll explain later," I said, adding, when he was unsatisfied, "Alaric, he wants to. Trust us."

Alaric looked at the kid. Jules had her arm around him in an oddly maternal fashion. She nodded again, catching my eye this time, looking...relieved, almost grateful. And I was naïve enough in that instant to think that we were all going to come out of this unscathed.

I'd just opened the back door to the Avalon when I heard Jules's cry - "No!"

Whipping back around I saw it, too late, out of the corner of my eye, heard it whistling towards my face. To this day I don't know what happened - if it was just a badly-timed accident, or if one of them had deliberately launched the grenade.

But I do know this: my brother threw himself in front of me, and as vervain and shrapnel exploded across the back of his head, it didn't matter a bit which one it'd been. My big brother, for whom all insult and injury was supposed to slide like water off a duck's back; his face was swallowed in red mist inches from mine, and as it sank into my hair and onto my skin, that inner coil of tension that I'd been hanging on to snapped.

My brother who made light of everything and anything, who had long ago convinced even me of his own invinciblity, lay crumpled at my feet in a spreading pool of his own blood, the back of his head dented in, brains blown clean across the wall – eyes closed, face the colour of death – and all I knew was fury.

I wasn't even aware of doing it, not really. Caroline told me later, she told me about the massacre. I wasn't conscious of much of anything, not of the others, not of moving, of time, of thought. Through the rage all I knew was the screams and the sensations, Christ, the sensations, so familiar and so forgotten:

The feel of teeth through the layers of the neck: skin, easy; the resistance underneath, the pliant, luscious little give on entering the thick-walled artery, tip of the teeth resting against the strap of muscle and the payoff, the prize: the exhilaration of blood, warm, pumping, pulsing straight up from the heart onto my tongue, curling down my throat; the immediate thirst for more.

The muted crack that accompanied the separation of vertebrae; the give of flesh and crunch of bone and the plump suppleness of the heart, the wrenching and then the smooth glide out of the cavity of the chest, and the blood, glistening on my hands.

Other things I was dimly aware of: Caroline taking some of them out, Bonnie incapacitating a few, the flames on my back, stakes in my sides, my arms, my legs, my back, the wooden buckshot, the same stuff that Klaus' goons had used on me the day before. But I couldn't stop. I didn't stop, till they were all dead, or gone. And then I turned around in the alley to find it empty. Empty but for the litter of werewolf bodies and parts, and Damon, still lying where he'd fallen. Chest heaving, I stared blindly at his body.

Something occurred to me, tried to edge past the bloodlust into reason, and I searched my body for wounds. I ripped off my jacket, my shirt, my jeans, looking for holes the buckshot must have left behind, looking for bites – surely I'd been bitten? I was hard as hell, I always was – it all blends together, I'd told Elena, and how frightened she'd been: the thirst, the hunger, desire, lust. Now I was hard and aching, my head pounding, my hunger somehow only intensified by the feed, my whole body overwhelmed with an unappeasable thirst.

But I was unscathed. Was it possible...? I dragged two of the bodies over to Damon, and I don't know how long I crouched by him rubbing blood onto his lips, using my fingers, rubbing them over and into his mouth, only half-conscious of my whispered appeals for him to come back. Watching in dumb amazement as his colour returned, as the bits of shrapnel – too tiny to have ever successfully been picked out of his head – started falling out of his wounds, spontaneously ejected by healing flesh and bone.

And the body that I was holding up to his mouth groaned – _still_ _alive_. In a flash I was back at its neck – frantic for the last remaining squeeze of the heart and pulse of blood, sucking until it was dry, for too long, until my ears were filled with the sound of its veins scraping together like sandpaper, until rough hands pulled me off the body and pushed me against the wall. I struggled against his hold, feeling actual pain, feeling like my skin was on fire, my eyes were burning, my body would explode with need. Damon swayed on his feet, transfixed by the carnage before him. "What the fuck," he murmured, "did you do?"

"Damon," I said, breathing hard, the cold wall on the naked skin of my back doing nothing to alleviate the bloodlust. I stared wildly at him, the smell of blood in my nose, my ears picking up his heartbeat. "Damon, for Christ's sake, I don't know what's happening to me. Help me."

He stared at me, alarmed, belatedly registering my turmoil. He reached out with both hands, cautiously, as he had in the past, as if gentling a rabid animal. "Stefan, it's alright. You're okay. Come on, get control. Fight it."

I closed my eyes, but it only heightened my other senses. I stiffened when I felt – heard him come closer. I felt the veins churn beneath my eyes. "Don't come any closer. I - I can hear your heart."

What the fuck was I saying? Damon stopped, as if he was realising how far gone I was. "Stefan. Listen to me. You aren't going to feed on me. That's not an option. You hear me?" He spoke calmly, firmly, in short sentences that penetrated my confusion. It was all I could do to nod. "You're going to come out of it. You always have in the past. I'll help you."

"Damon–"

"You're going to let me help you. Alright?"

I nodded again. I heard him move closer still, and with a shock that reverberated through me with pleasure that was almost pain I felt his hand fist around my erection.

If I'd opened my mouth to object, I didn't know it; it got lost in my muted curses. I was beyond protest, beyond thought. All I knew was that every stroke of his fingers was easing the burn and channeling the tension racking my body in a wholly different direction.

And it wasn't enough. I took a fistful of his hair and pushed his head down to meet his hands. I hardly even recognised my own voice. "Suck me."

And, God, he did. His mouth closed around me and he sucked and didn't stop, and the relief was so acute I thought I would pass out. I was all sensation again, good sensation: his mouth was warm, his hair slick, fingers bruising on my hipbones, the zipper of his jacket cold against the fronts of my thighs. The bloodlust, the thirst, the ache low in my belly, the burn in my skin and eyes and the strain in my body all came to a head, crystallised into one clear desire as I gripped his matted hair and thrust into his mouth, told him to suck harder and faster. I was ready to explode, close to release - from everything.

I came hard in his mouth. I held his head still as I emptied myself into his throat, the feeling spreading from my dick up through my body, draining it of its unbearable tension. Spent, I fell back against the wall and slid to the ground, breathing hard.

Reason returned - thought returned, and close on its heels was horror.

He sat back on his heels, an incongruously self-satisfied expression on his face, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, licked his lips. Catlike. "Better, huh? Works every time."

I stared at him, incapable of speech. Paralysed with horror where he was sitting comfy, blasé as you please.

"Well, don't look at me like I deflowered you," he said. "You asked me to help: sex is sex, brother, and you came out of it. Sexual healing and all that." He raised an eyebrow, lips curled in his ironic smile. Lips which had just been around my dick. I looked away. "And it works, Marvin, oh yes it do."

My gaze travelled across the alley, from body to body, taking in the extent of the bloodbath with seeing eyes. A grim grey dusk was falling, but my eyes were keen in the dark, damnably so right now. His gaze followed mine, and he gave a low whistle. "You weren't kidding when you said you weren't noble, I'll tell you that." He glanced at me, and for an absurd moment I thought he expected me to reciprocate his humour. Then he sighed. "A little late for that self-recrimination of yours now, brother. I warned you, remember? I said I'd be right there, saying I told you so. So: I told you so." He prodded the nearest body with the toe of his shoe, and shrugged. "It's what we should have done in the first place, anyway. In my head it was more of a team effort, though," he added, consideringly.

I stared at the blood on my hands, matted into the creases of my palms and elbows. I wiped my mouth and my fingers came away redder. A wave of nausea rolled through me. I hung my head, caught sight of my nakedness, wondered if I'd ever been more fucked up.

He was eyeing me critically. "Alright, look, put some clothes on. And we can start cleaning this goddamn mess up." He got to his feet and indicated for me to do the same.

"Where," I croaked, then cleared my throat, standing slowly, "where are the others?"

"Don't know. Guess I wasn't paying attention, what with being almost dead and all." He scrutinised the bodies. "Don't see them, though."

"Christ I hope not."

"They probably cleared out," he continued, indicating the back door to the Avalon, which hung slightly ajar. "I would have. No sign of mama wolf or Tyler, either. Brady's over here, though," he said, peering at one of the bodies, sounding impressed. "Not quite so pret-ty anymore."_  
_

I pulled on my shirt and jeans, recoiling now from the feel of the cold, wet blood sticking to my skin. Working quickly and quietly, we wrapped the bodies in sheets Damon found in a nearby dumpter, and tossed them into one of the abandoned shop lots adjoining the alley through a dusty, rusty back door that we broke the lock on, intending to come back for them later with the car, and bring them to be buried somewhere.

We mopped up the blood as best we could with the remainder of the sheets. I didn't know whether to be thankful or not that the worst of it was Damon's. Lucky for us the ripper didn't like to let blood go to waste, Damon said.

If this was lucky, I thought, I didn't want to see unlucky. Truth be told, I didn't know what I felt. But lucky was pretty low on the list.

"I guess that's as clean as we're going to get it," said Damon, rising from the stained patch of ground, surveying the restored alley, swiping his hands over his jeans. They only came away dirtier. "Well. That's over and done with, at least."

I wasn't so sure.

x x x


	4. Game On

_A/N: Sorry this chapter's later than usual, been a hectic week! Thanks for reading and don't forget to leave a review :)_

_Rating: M for _**_sexual content_**_, _**_incest_**_ and _**_mature themes_**_. __Please read only if you're okay with these._

* * *

x x x

The Avalon was deserted when we stepped back into it, empty and unlit except for the flickering fluorescent lights over the bar. Even the bartender was nowhere to be seen. The werewolves had chosen their meeting place well.

Not so much for them, I supposed.

We rinsed ourselves off in the bathroom sinks as best we could, which wasn't very well at all. Emerging into the night, we found the others waiting for us in the cars parked outside - yes, cars, plural - and erupting in unexpectedly enthusiastic greeting when we walked out the door. Probably suggested they hadn't really been erring on the side of expecting us. Still, they'd waited, which I thought was quite a promising sign for a bunch of people who, for the most part, supposedly couldn't stand us.

What wasn't so promising was the fact that I was painfully aware of the noise of their beating hearts. Faint, but like a background buzz that resonated in my skull, got my own pulse going.

"Where'd this come from?" Damon asked, sounding pleased, running his hands over the metallic blue hood of the Dodge Ram that had appeared to have fallen into our possession. He eyed the long bed at the rear with satisfaction, and I knew he was thinking of the bodies we had to transport.

Caroline flushed crimson. "We needed another car. So..."

"She headed up the road and stole one," Alaric supplied - only a little reprovingly.

"I'll bring it back, after - well, after all this is over, probably. Maybe. They've got another car, anyway. He didn't even need that much compelling..." She shook her head impatiently at herself. "Anyway, it doesn't matter; Damon, you're alright! And Stefan! My God, you really scared us, you were like..."

_This other person._ Elena had said those words to me in this exact same tone of voice, with this same expression in her eyes, the first time she'd seen the ripper inside of me, out in the woods.

The one that said, _you're a monster._

"...I don't know, like this crazy feral whirlwind or something. You _saved_ us." Before my brain could wrap itself around her words she hugged me hard, then pulled back, smiling tearily at me.

I stared at her, uncomprehending.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Her smile became a little uncertain, a little thrown off by my unresponsiveness. She turned to the others. "Didn't he?"

"He did," said Bonnie, unexpectedly, with a warmth which hadn't been there since before her grandmother had died. "He really did." She came over next to Caroline, and lightly touched the back of my hand in thanks - with a burst of dread I jerked it away, my heart immediately picking up speed, my senses already switching on and brain switching off at the mere feel and sound of her fingertip pulse.

But her brief touch had already worked its magic. Her gaze flew to mine in shock, and she stared at me with those big, serious eyes, looking as though she'd sensed or seen a hint – just a hint – of what the episode in the alley had cost me, what it had turned me into. But I didn't want her to see. I dropped my gaze.

But she was determined to pursue it. "Thank you, Stefan," she said - resolutely, almost vehemently - and the tone of her voice made me feel sick with familiarity: it reminded me of the way Elena used to look at me sometimes, when she was trying to deny her revulsion, trying to convince us both that I was okay, that I was going to be okay.

Lying to both of us.

I shook my head, and she looked as though she would have touched me again, taken my arm or something, but both of us pulled away at the very prospect of contact. "You were right," she said, instead. "My magic wasn't enough." She swallowed. I knew how much the admission had cost her, but where I before might have felt sympathy, I felt only numb. "We'd all be dead if it wasn't for what you did."

The others thanked me too, and all their misplaced gratitude only made me feel that much more remote, that much more withdrawn. If they only knew what I was. None of them would be able to even look at me.

Damon watched it all from a little way off, eyes on me the entire time. Damon knew. But that grimace – or was it a smile? I could never tell – of his was inscrutable.

x x x

After a brief stop to dig some (admittedly sloppy) graves, we made thankfully quick work of the rest of the road to Rochester, exchanging the various versions of what had gone down since the Camaro had overturned, especially behind the Avalon. Alaric had wrestled Jeremy and Matt back into the bar and out to the car once Damon had taken the grenade. Caroline and Bonnie had stayed to cover me, fending them off for as long as they could before Caroline had narrowly missed getting bitten, and Bonnie, nose pouring with blood, had almost fainted from the strain of using too much of her powers. Caroline said Jules and Tyler had taken off early in the fighting into the street and disappeared. She had no idea where they'd gone.

Damon and I...we were briefer in our account. Left out the more colourful details.

We got in to Rochester just shy of midnight, and hit a couple of motels before finding one with vacancies. It was a little more out of town than the first two, which actually suited us pretty well. They had just three rooms left for the seven of us, so Matt, Alaric and Jeremy took one and the girls another, leaving me with Damon again. It didn't beat being alone, but despite everything I supposed it beat having to face anyone else.

Which I did have to do, for a little while more at least. According to Damon, we had a conversation due with Alaric. We found him in his room three doors down with the boys.

"Out," said Damon, to Matt and Jeremy, who stared at us.

"I think Bonnie and Caroline could use a little company," I filled in, inwardly shaking my head at my brother. "Now that we've got a bit of–"

"Don't say 'peace'," warned Matt, already getting up to go, gesturing for Jeremy to do the same. "Don't you jinx it."

"I was going to say 'time'."

"Same goes, I'd say," said Alaric, watching them leave. He waited till the door was shut behind them and the three of us were alone. Then he cocked his head at us, and sighed. "Okay, boys. Am I going to need a drink for this?"

"Probably."

Alaric raised his eyebrows at me as Damon made his way across the room. "What's going on?"

I shrugged, shaking my head. _Don't know. _"Supposedly I'm not going to like it."

"Neither of you are," came Damon's voice from inside the mini-bar, before he emerged with those tiny bottles of Smirnoff, Jim Beam, Absolut, Bacardi and more that they kept in those things, dropping them on the bed next to Alaric. "But that," he said, unscrewing the top off a bourbon and dropping into the armchair, "is what I'm here for. Doing the dirty work. Makin' the plans the heroes are too heroic to make and all that."

I watched him take a long swig and swallow, and in spite of myself and in spite of all that was good and holy, my mouth went dry at the memory of how that throat closed up all warm and wet.

He noticed. Of course he did. He caught my eye, and that smirk of his widened. "Or too _noble_. Isn't that right, brother?"

We were going straight to hell. Not that we'd been headed anywhere else, I supposed. Not for over a century now. Ignoring him, I filled Alaric in on the plan – on my part of it, anyway, right up till the part where we were short a fake doppelganger.

"Okay," he said, when I was finished, nodding, looking surprisingly stoic about it, looking like he was taking it all in. But he caught sight of a Glenlivet among the bottles beside him and snatched it up gratefully, drinking deep and grimacing before he spoke again. "Okay. So, setting aside the suicidality of the whole thing for a second, where does the dirty work part come in?" He glanced at Damon. "'Cause somehow I'm guessing that's also where _I _come in."

"And that, gentlemen," said Damon, starting on his third shot, "is an _excellent_ segue into my part of the whole set-up. Which, if we're being honest – which we are – elevates a pretty fucking shitty plan – no offence, brother – to a pretty awesome one. Even if I do say so myself."

"Get to the point, Damon."

He smiled, a little boy on Christmas morning smile, baby blues twinkling, teeth flashing. It might have been mistaken for sweetness – if you didn't know him at all. But I did. And I'd seen this smile before: it never boded well.

"Two words: Vanessa Monroe."

The name sounded familiar, and from Alaric choking out curses and protests through a mouthful of scotch beside me I gathered it wasn't good.

"Vanessa…?"

"Monroe," Damon repeated cheerfully, as Alaric put his bottle down and stood. "Isobel's research assistant."

"She isn't getting involved." Rick sounded more clear-headed, more lucid than I thought I'd heard since Jenna had left us.

Damon waggled his brows, looking at him but speaking to me. "Little hottie from Duke. Long brown hair, skinny white girl," he added, meaningfully. "Mm mm."

"Damon, goddammit, we aren't getting her into this." Alaric paced a couple steps back and forth, ran his hands through his hair, frustrated, looking much like how I must look when trying to talk sense into our favourite blue-eyed fiend with no scruples. "Look, I understand that – that concepts like morality and conscience are difficult for you to grasp, I get that. But it'll be suicide. We can't do that to her. This is no kind of life – I told her to stay out of all of this, remember?"

"Oh, I remember," said Damon, with a strange smile. "That's the beauty of it, my friend – she doesn't _want_ to stay out of it. You want to talk to me about morality and conscience? Shall we compel a random stranger instead?"

My brother, on the moral high ground. Alaric looked as though the world was upside down; I didn't blame him. He raised an eyebrow. "You realise the trail of random strangers you've left in your wake is in the hundreds by now."

"Alright, look. She already knows about us. We don't have to teach her a whole lot of very, _very_ tedious history. She's practically an almanac – short on those at the moment – very useful to have around."

"Especially since the two that you've met are now dead," said Alaric. "Why do I not find that track record reassuring?"

Damon continued as if he hadn't spoken. "Besides, compulsion would be a pain in the ass for this."

"And why is that?"

I had to agree – on this point, anyway. "Compulsion isn't foolproof," I explained. "There are always loopholes. And with something that's as tricky and that's going to be under as much scrutiny as this…"

"You can be sure a coven of witches with a lot to lose is going to dig them right out."

This gave Alaric pause, but still he shook his head. "I'm sorry. There has to be another way. I sure as hell won't do this to her, and I won't let you, either."

Damon pursed his lips, as though giving this due consideration. "Well," he said. "_Tiny_ bit late for that."

Alaric froze, the colour draining from his face - and I watched him, awareness of his blood hitting me like a ton of bricks, out of nowhere, getting my skin crawling again. Imagining the little arteries contracting under his skin, squeezing, shunting all that warm, vital, life-giving blood into the major vessels – into the heart. I took a deep breath, took a step backwards. Damon's eyes snapped to mine, widened, and I could almost hear his words from earlier in my head: _Get control. Fight it._

_Focus. Vanessa Monroe._

Alaric's voice pulled me back. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

With a wary eye on me, Damon pulled an iPhone out of his pocket and handed it to him.

"This is mine," said Rick, bemused, taking it and turning it over in his hand. His other hand went to the jacket pocket where he usually kept it, and found it empty.

Damon had the grace to look momentarily sheepish. "I took it from you in Altoona. Earlier today." Then his eyes narrowed. "You know, given we're on the run and all, I'm thinking you could probably apply a little more vigilance."

But Alaric was no longer listening. His eyes, widened first in confusion and then dismay, were fixed for long minutes on whatever my brother had handed him on the screen. "You fucker," he breathed, finally, looking up at him. "Damon, what've you done?"

Damon shrugged, fairly oozing nonchalance and impenitence. And Alaric pulled a fist back and punched him in the face.

Amid the shouts, my brother's claims to a broken nose and the two-man scuffle that broke out over the entire length of the floor, I stepped resignedly over them and picked up the phone lying on the carpet.

Email filled the screen:

* * *

**From**: A. Saltzman

**Date:** Oct 6, 2010 03:12:02 PM

**To:** V. Monroe

**Subject:** need your help

Vanessa, remember when I said I didnt want you to get caught up in all this? Changed my mind. Can you get to rochester, ny asap? I need you. I'll send you more details when I can.

Alaric saltzmn

Ps: hope you havent forgotten me.

* * *

**From:** V. Monroe

**Date:** Oct 6, 2010 03:36:21 PM

**To:** A. Saltzman

**Subject:** Re: need your help

Hi Alaric,

I can't begin to tell you how glad I am you got in touch. Of course I haven't forgotten you. To be honest, I've barely thought about anything else since I met you, Elena and Damon in Duke. How could I? It's incredible to see your research in the flesh, and irresistible to want to follow it. In that sense, in a strange way, I understand Isobel's fascination, and the path that it took her on. I hope it doesn't offend you or upset you to hear that. I just want you to know how much your email means to me. I'm really glad you changed your mind.

Anyway, sorry for rambling. It just so happens I've got a break due and I've got time off for the next two weeks and had no clue what to do with myself, away from academia. Sad, huh? So, OK, it all sounds a little...cloak and dagger, but I'm going to take a leap. I asked for it, didn't I? 'Opportunity seldom knocks twice' and all that... I'm getting in my car and coming to Rochester. I should be able to get there by tomorrow morning.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Yours,

Vanessa

* * *

x x x

"Fuck. That guy does _not_ know how to pull a punch." The words came out garbled as Damon stood at the sink, holding a cold washcloth to his swollen, broken jaw, examining himself in the mirror. I'd broken up the fight and dragged him back to our room kicking and cursing just minutes before. With a grunt of pain he snapped the lower fragment of his jawbone back into place, and leaned his forehead against the mirror in relief as it began to heal.

After a moment he started work on his nose.

"I think it's safe to say he wasn't trying." I leaned against the bathroom door, watching him. My brother had – if not quite grace – an unaffected economy of movement honed from decades of living in his own skin, erasing that natural human awkwardness of his which I still remembered like it was yesterday. It was fascinating to see. "Can't say I blame him."

"Really? You're going to take a shot now?"

"Oh, Alaric's fists probably about covered it. Wasn't undeserved, is all I'm saying."

His nose shifted with a crack and a colourful curse. He leaned against the sink for a moment, then stumbled past me and into the room, reaching for the bourbon he'd left on the desk. Sitting heavily on the bed, he drained the bottle and then held it to his face.

He rested back against the headboard, mouth falling open in a deep groan as the alcohol burned down his throat and his face slowly healed up. He was blue and black and purple all over, and he'd lost a couple of teeth which hadn't quite come back in yet. I couldn't help smiling a little.

"What?" he said, cracking a cranky eye open.

I ran more cold water over the cloth and brought it over. "Anyone'd think you ran into all of Klaus' army, the way you look."

He started to laugh, then grimaced in pain. "You should see the other guy."

"I did. He has a bloody lip and a black eye. You have – hell, I don't know what you have. A rearranged face."

"Yeah, yeah. Alaric one, Damon zero."

I leaned on the table next to the bed. "Why'd you do it?"

"Mainly because killing him would've been a waste of time."

"Damon. Why'd you contact Vanessa?"

He sighed. "She knows everything, almanac, compulsion won't work, etcetera. Gotta start paying attention, brother."

"Right, right. And that's it. No other reason." I waited, but he only shrugged. "What exactly was the plan there, huh? Trick her into coming out here and expect everyone to play along?"

"When did I trick her?"

"Mm, I don't know, Damon. How about when you stole Alaric's phone and impersonated him in email?"

He managed to look aggrieved, almost insulted. "I told her we needed her, which we do. I asked her to come, she wanted to. This is what she _wants_, for Christ's sake. She's a fucking adult, isn't she?" He coughed, then gasped suddenly and clutched at his side, looking completely wretched. "Ah, Jesus, I think he broke a couple of ribs, too."

"Good for him," I muttered. I dumped the wet cloth unceremoniously on his face, and lifted his shirt. I felt low on his chest where the pain was, ran my fingers along the discontinuity of bone on the bottom rib, and without really thinking about it continued running them down to his side in the space between his ribcage and hipbone.

I felt him suck in a breath, felt his belly tighten, with something more than just pain.

I rose, cleared my throat, looked away. "Feels like it. Sit still for a minute while it heals up."

His hand shot up to grab hold of mine as I lifted it off his chest. His blue gaze held mine, and heated. "Never was very good at sitting still."

I shrugged and shook his hand off. "Your call. Go ahead, poke a lung out." My voice lacked conviction even to my own ears. I took in the bed, his naked skin, knew with blinding clarity where this was going, but my mind was curiously blank.

I watched with a strange, detached fascination as his hands went to his belt buckle and undid it, and then the fly of his jeans.

He leaned back on his elbows. "Come on, Stef. It's been a hell of a day. Make me feel good."

I don't know why I did it. But I did. I got on my knees between his legs on the carpeted floor that matched the walls and wrapped my fingers around him. Maybe it was how pissed off he made me - and worse, that he was possibly right. Maybe I was too tired to argue anymore. Maybe it was his mashed up face, maybe it was the reminder of how close I'd come to losing him behind the Avalon, maybe it was the memory of what he'd done for me. Maybe it was knowing how damn good it felt, how it took the edge off, how much he needed it. I was still on edge myself.

Maybe it was just that he'd told me to, and he was my big brother – but then again, Christ, he was my big brother.

Hell, we'd spent a hundred and forty-five years living outside the bounds of humanity. Somehow the morality of it – or lack thereof – didn't seem to apply to us.

Being on this end was...different. I wasn't too sure what I was doing, but he combed his hands through my hair, almost gentle now, murmured instructions for me. I dipped my head down, ran my tongue up the length of him like he said. And then all of a sudden he wasn't gentle anymore. He grabbed my hair, urging me on with hoarser, harsher commands. Rough like he knew I wouldn't break. When I took him in my mouth he jerked his hips upwards, pushing my head down to meet him. I held him down with hands on either side of him, not wanting to upset his mending rib, and was surprised when he let me.

His eyes were closed, long lashes - almost comically long - lying over his skin, his face healing rapidly, bruises receding and pained pleasure written all over it as I sucked him off, and I'd never seen that look on his face before. No trace of that infuriatingly cool irony remained in his expression, the one that drove me crazy. It gave me a rush of satisfaction - and the sounds of it, the noises he was making gave me an even bigger one. Hell, I never knew noises like that could sound so good, not coming from him.

I curled my tongue over the head of him the way I liked done to me, the way I knew felt good as I heard his breathing roughen, felt him quicken, keeping up the relentless rhythm he liked as I finished him off. I glanced up at him as he came, catching his gaze, seeing what his face looked like as pleasure took him over. As he breathed harshly, eyes hooded as he held my head and watched me swallow everything he gave me.

Afterwards he fell back on the bed with a long groan, eyes shut and limbs relaxed like he was never getting up again. "Fuck, Stefan," he breathed, after a long while. "You done that before?"

I leaned against the side of the bed, arms draped across the sheets, legs across the floor, torn between arousal and incredulity but too exhausted to do anything about either. I laughed weakly – only he could make me laugh at a time like this. "Oh, all the time. Elena was just my beard." I groaned and put my head in my hands. "Oh, God, that wasn't funny."

"I think I'm rubbing off on you."

I got up on the bed beside him. "I think you most definitely just did."

He reached for the clock on the bedside table and threw it at me. "No sex jokes," he said in a strange, low voice, and I realised he was mimicking me - badly, as always, "it's just too _soon_, Damon. I have to go away and process all of this. Write a few entries in my diary. Reproach myself in thirty-five different ways. Self-flagellate." He gave my mussed hair a critical once-over. "Also, get some better mousse. The hero hairdo's really gone to shit these days."

"And I," I said, doing his eye thing, "have to stop seducing my little brother in filthy alleyways and motel rooms."

"It's just too much of a cliché."

"Exactly." I lay down next to him, stretching out, sighing at the physical pleasure of it. Fuck it, I was filthy but too tired to care, much less jump in the shower. "And maybe, just maybe, I'm post-coital enough to admit that I–" I yawned, "I asked Vanessa Monroe to come to Rochester because I was worried about my friend Alaric, and I thought she'd be good for him."

"I doubt I'll ever be post-coital enough to admit _that_," he murmured.

I smiled. "Thought so." I closed my eyes. Christ, it'd been a long, long day. My muscles were humming with the simple bliss of relaxation.

"Hey, Damon."

"Yeah."

"What the fuck are we doing?"

"Jesus. Save it for your diary, Stefan."

"Fuck you."

"Hmm."

"Why'd you take that grenade for me?"

There was a long silence before his non-answer floated over in the darkness.

"Go to sleep, brother."

And I did.

x x x


	5. Into The Night

_A/N: Had fun writing this chapter, hope you guys enjoy it, and thanks so much for the comments! Each one is very much appreciated. Hope you like Vanessa, and forgive her for stealing a bit of screen time from the brothers. Please leave a review! :)_

_Rating: Once again M for _**_sexual content_**_, _**_incest_**_ and _**_mature themes_**_, so __please read only if you're alright with these._

* * *

x x x

I'm in the Camaro. We've had some good times, this car and me. Sun's out. Warm on my face. The wheel spins against my palms as I take a right. I turn to check the road ahead and I already know what I'm going to see next to me.

Elena.

She's there like she always is in this dream. I smile and start to relax. But something's different. Something's wrong. This time her eyes are closed - and when she opens them she starts to cry.

Her tears are blood.

I want to make her stop but I'm caught in this never-ending turn. The car's spinning, she's sitting there with tears bleeding down her face, and when she opens her mouth to speak to me her voice sends chills down my spine.

I don't recognise her voice.

_Damon_, she says, _they're coming._

_They're coming. _

That voice is pounding in my head like the witch's aneurysms, and it won't stop. That's when I notice I haven't got my ring on, and her face dissolves in hot blood as my skin goes up in smoke.

I open my eyes shouting, in a cold sweat, wondering where the hell I am. Then my senses calm down and I make out the bedside clock, the bedsprings at my back. I remember we're in the piss poor excuse for a motel somewhere on the outskirts of nowhere. Alright, we're in New York. But I'm still craning my neck looking for Elena, trying to get that fucking voice out of my head.

"Damon, what the hell?"

Can't shake the dream off. My hands are shaking and I'm finding it hard to breathe as I roll to the edge of the bed and sit up trying to settle down. Stefan follows me.

"Hey," he says, his voice rough and rumbly sounding from sleep. It sounds good. "What is it?"

Bad dream, I want to say, but my lips curl at how pathetic it sounds. He's frowning at me and he's got a hand on my shoulder and his body is warm. He's half-asleep and looks fucked-up from yesterday and he smells like sweat and stale blood. But I don't really give a damn how he smells as I push him onto his back and hold him down. He's awake now and he's looking at me like I'm crazy. I want to tell him to get off his high horse. He hasn't seen crazy.

"What it is," I say, and my face is right up against his so I'm practically whispering it against his mouth, "is I'm fucking horny."

Oh, he's awake alright. He gives me his moral outrage face. The one he's been giving me since I blew him in Altoona. I can feel his dick against my thigh and I rub him a little to let him know it.

He doesn't say yes, but he doesn't say no. I saw him when we were talking to Alaric yesterday, saw his bloodlust – my brother will never admit it but he needs this as much as I do. Probably needs it more.

Clinging to some code of human morality becomes a pretty hypocritical after a century of maiming and killing, but I guess it keeps him happy. Or so he chooses to believe. So sure, I'll take the fall for whatever the hell is happening between us. Doesn't bother me. Sex is sex. And sex helps.

The dream is still fogging my brain. Elena, the blood, all that bourbon I drank last night, Stefan warm and stiff underneath me...put it all together and I'm hard as hell and I know he feels it. Fuck I need this. But he's just looking at me like he's waiting for me to tell him what to do.

Oh yeah, I can do that.

"Here's what you're gonna do, little brother," I say, leaning in close so I'm talking in his ear. "You're gonna get your dick out. And you're gonna play with yourself till I say otherwise."

He looks like he's going to say no. Or he looks like he's going to say, "Or what?" which I don't have an answer to. Or nothing, really. Except we'll both be really fucking frustrated and pissed off, and I won't be able to shake off the dream and he won't be able to shake off the hunger.

So instead of saying no, he turns so his back is to me, and he unbuttons and shoves his pants down and puts his hand on himself.

It's not what I want. Damn loopholes.

"Sit up so I can see you."

He stops for a minute, then he settles back against the headboard, sitting one hand behind his head and one hand moving slowly up and down, still with that something he moves with – it was Katherine that pointed it out to me once, the irony. _Languid grace_, she called it, all the way back when, whatever the fuck that means. _Makes you wanna do all kinds of sinful things with that body. _

"Yeah," I say, sitting back to watch. "Much better."

He's looking right at me, like it's a challenge, and I'll be damned if I'm supposed to be cowed by that, like I'm supposed to look away or something. So I stare back at him, watch him as he gets himself off. He's a good looking guy. Jesus. Not hard to look at, and keep looking. Got that Italian look that sort of passed me by in the gene pool, got that olive skin, got those crazy green eyes. And a mouth made for sin. Made for doing sinful things. Just like it did last night.

x x x

My hand is working up and down and Damon is looking at me like he's daring me to look away. Looking like he's maybe a little angry. With himself, with me, with something else, I don't know. He woke up yelling Elena's name, over and over, and I woke up in a panic, thinking she was in danger – and then I remembered.

And he woke up horny. Dreaming of my girlfriend. My dead girlfriend. And now he's expending his lust on me. His equally dead brother of a hundred and forty-five years. If this isn't fucked up, I don't know what is.

But I'm not really thinking about any of that right now. I'm not really thinking at all. My mind is still only half awake, full of physical sensations and not much else, full of what we're doing – actually, I have no idea what we're doing, so I'm just going on his instructions again, just like last night. Part of the rush – a huge part – comes from not having any idea where this is going, not having a plan, not having to be in control anymore – from being able to relinquish control to him.

And it feels so damn good. It's such a _relief_.

For the first time in a long, long while there's no bloodlust, and I'm not thinking, I'm not tense, not on edge, not fending off the storm. My body is relaxed, muscles still half asleep and heavy but coming awake with a gentle, unhurried pleasure with every stroke of my thumb and fingers. His blue eyes fix me to the sheets and my mind is blank except for what he's told me to do, waiting for wherever's he leading me next.

I trust him, I realise, with a jolt of surprise. I trust him where I wouldn't trust anyone else. My big brother. We're staring at each other deep into this long, long night in this dirty, dark motel room at the end of a longer, dirtier, darker existence, and we're all each other's got.

And all of a sudden the strange spell is broken by a voice we hear, through the doors and the loose floorboards down in reception one floor below us, feminine, throaty, tired but happy. It's been a long time since we've heard happy.

"It's good to see you, Alaric."

We both freeze and I see his gaze sharpen, and I know my own is unfogging, too, from the haze of – desire or whatever this crazy messed up thing is. I cock my head in the direction of the door and am up out of bed, restoring my jeans to order, yanking and buttoning before he moves.

And then with a low growl he's suddenly standing in front of me, hands almost painfully fisted on mine as though he means to stop me from clothing myself, a split second before sanity returns to his eyes. His fingers fall away from mine and he's left looking much like how I feel, angry and exhausted and frustrated.

"Later," he snarls, before turning and slipping out the door. And I wonder why it sounds like a threat.

x x x

Vanessa had been driving for just over ten hours by the time she pulled up at the Value Best Motel, off state highway 31 outside of Albion, just like Alaric had said.

She'd hit the email reply button in the afternoon with shaking hands, thrown some stuff together in a duffel bag which could last her maybe a week, at a stretch – she had no idea how long she was going to be away – got in her car and stared blankly at her white-knuckled hands clutching the steering wheel, wondering if she'd gone a little bit insane.

The latest article she'd been working on for weeks on end, through sleepless nights poring through ancient dusty volumes written in a terrible hand – thank God for the invention of the printed word, she thought – had been rejected by five journals for being...unsubstantiated.

Lycanthropy in the modern world had been overtaken by pop culture, and there was no shortage of anthropological research on the hows and whys of the way the werewolf and the vampire had come to obsess the world's imagination – from Anne Rice to Stephenie Meyer, from _Buffy_ to _True Blood_, from _An American Werewolf in London_ to _Paris_, pop culture had fed these mythologies till they were virtually unrecognizable from just over a century ago, at the birth of _Dracula_, and even more estranged from the early 18th century, where the folklore behind the vampire as we knew it was widely accepted to have originated, in Southeastern Europe. Folk stories handed down verbally through the generations, of demons and malevolent spirits that would morph into the fictional incarnations we were presently familiar with, had been recorded then for the first time.

Vanessa knew all these things, and yet now she knew something more: she knew it was no mere folklore. And what she had initially thought to be a blessing had become a curse: fiction and superstition were no longer enough; she now found them empty, meaningless compared to the reality that she had glimpsed and lost. The newfound tedium she was discovering in academia came through in her work and her writing. She was falling behind in her research, she was failing to meet her publication quota - and she didn't much care.

Folklore provided an amusing anthropological and psychological perspective, sure – but it was all a _lie_. She was a researcher, and what she wanted was the truth – and that she couldn't have it ate away at her, consumed her mind, and she found herself reading and rereading all the information she had on the Salvatores, on Katherine Pierce, on other individuals of little or no academic interest but whom she knew to be real from her hours of conversation with Alaric Saltzman, Damon Salvatore and Elena Gilbert that one fateful day in Isobel's office.

What had Alaric said to her? _You don't want to get caught up in this. It'll take over and keep you from being able to live your life._ Too late. Meeting them alone had opened her eyes and mind and changed her life, threw everything she knew about the world out the window, and there was no going back.

So she'd taken a sabbatical. Ostensibly to travel, to pursue some private research. She'd planned to go down to Mystic Falls. She'd never been much of a doer – she had a researcher's brain: observing, collecting data, and it had never occurred to her, until now, that she could be part of the action, be involved in field work. So she'd holed up at home for a couple of days, working up the courage to throw herself into the thick of it.

And then Alaric's email had come.

It had been like the universe giving her a great big _GO!_ sign, flashing a neon lit arrow on the road to Rochester, and she'd been so keyed up she'd had to read his email a few times before she'd absorbed enough of it to type out a reply with trembling fingers on her Blackberry.

And as she sat in her car in the parking lot of the shitty student accommodation block she was living in, questioning her sanity which had probably been suffering a slow erosion over the past few weeks, she'd thought, _screw it_, and put her foot on the pedal.

With each passing hour that brought her away from Durham, unease had bloomed in her chest, and at nightfall she'd almost panicked and turned back around. She'd considered stopping at a motel for the night, but she'd known if she didn't keep driving she might change her mind and end up regretting it for the rest of her life.

Opportunity seldom knocks twice. Isobel had told her that. The last time she'd seen her. She'd seemed so sad, and now Vanessa knew why. She couldn't imagine leaving the life Isobel had had – her students, her faculty, her career, her marriage, her husband. Leaving a man like Alaric? Vanessa recalled his face with an absent smile. It was a face a woman could depend on. Strong and trustworthy. And handsome, with that floppy sandy hair, grey-blue eyes, so friendly – except when he'd been manhandling her into a chair after she'd, um, tried to kill Elena. God, she'd felt stupid. Remembering it sent a flush to her cheeks.

But he'd been so sweet afterwards, so sad as he'd told her, _it's okay, it's really okay. _About Isobel; about coming back to Duke. _It feels good to have her in my past. It's time to move beyond this. _It had given her the strength to move on, too. Move on from losing her mentor, the only person she'd ever met who'd seen merit in and encouraged her passion for comparative folklore.

His next email had come in sometime in the wee hours, when she'd been driving down the interstate in a sleepy haze, further and further into the night, partly convinced he was never going to email her again and that she was going to end up driving all the way back to NC for nothing, but stubbornly determined to get to Rochester anyway, just to be able to say that she had. _She's got a stubborn streak a mile wide_, her mom had always said, _she's gotta watch out for that or it's gonna lead her into bad places._

So she was really, really glad when her Blackberry signalled the arrival of a new email, and when she opened her inbox to find a new message from Alaric Saltzman she didn't think she'd felt happier in weeks. She clicked it.

* * *

**From:** A. Saltzman

**Date:** Oct 7, 2010 01:25:34 AM

**To:** V. Monroe

**Subject:** Re: re: need your help

Hi Vanessa,

It's good to hear from you too. I wish it was under better circumstances. I'm so, so sorry that you've gotten involved in this – I said I didn't want you to get caught up in it, and I still don't. I told you it'll take over your life, Vanessa, and it will, but aside from that it's also incredibly risky right now.

If you haven't left Duke yet, or if you're still nearby, please, stay home. Stay safe. It doesn't offend me, what you said about Isobel, but it worries me. The thought of you getting involved, getting hurt, when there's no need for you to be – the thought of anyone else getting involved in this that doesn't need to be... if anything happened to you I wouldn't be able to forgive myself.

Turn around and go home. Don't come to Rochester. Please. It's for your own good.

Regards,

Alaric

* * *

Her mood had taken a distinct turn for the worse as she read these words, crushing her hopes, filling her equally with foreboding and angry disbelief. Above all she'd felt suddenly so, so foolish, coming all the way out here on an email from a man she'd met once in her life. Her face had burned with embarrassment. Maybe her mother had been right.

No. No, she wasn't going to sit back and take this bullshit, she'd thought. She wanted this. She'd pulled over on an off-road and angrily punched out a reply, trying (and somewhat failing) to keep her tone measured.

* * *

**From:** V. Monroe

**Date:** Oct 7, 2010 01:28:45 AM

**To:** A. Saltzman

**Subject:** Re: re: need your help

Alaric,

I'm sorry, I don't understand your change of heart. But I'm on the I-390, just passed Geneseo Airport, and I'm just outside of Rochester.

I've been driving since 4pm, and I've been waiting for your reply since then, too. Is this some kind of joke?

Vanessa

* * *

She'd hit send and waited a few seconds, and had been just about to send another email with her phone number asking him to call her immediately, when his reply had come in.

* * *

**From:** A. Saltzman

**Date:** Oct 7, 2010 01:32:09 AM

**To:** V. Monroe

**Subject:** Re: re: need your help

_Attachment: VBMAlbionmap_

Hi Vanessa,

It's no joke, and I'm sorry, I must sound crazy. Come to the Value Best Motel in Albion, a little outside Rochester – continue on the I-390 till you're in Rochester, then get on NY 31 to Albion – I've attached a map – and I'll explain everything when you're here.

Regards,

Alaric

* * *

**From:** V. Monroe

**Date:** Oct 7, 2010 01:33:12 AM

**To:** A. Saltzman

**Subject:** Re: re: need your help

On my way.

Vanessa

* * *

In just over an hour she'd arrived, after getting a little turned around in Rochester, and now she locked her car and stepped lightly up the steps and through the entrance of the run down old motel which, unless it was essentially free to stay there, didn't look like value, and certainly didn't look the best. But she didn't really notice as she came through the door and almost ran into Alaric Saltzman.

He'd been standing near the door, keeping an eye out for cars and visitors, and he'd spotted her as soon as she'd arrived. Despite the confusion of the past hour she beamed at the sight of him – here he was, the key to all the mysteries she wished to unlock, in the flesh. Haggard and tired-looking and unkempt and thinner than she remembered, with a swollen lip and a bruise around one eye, and somehow sadder, but in the flesh nonetheless.

"It's good to see you, Alaric," she said, and she sounded a little croaky in that way that her voice got when she was really tired, but she was so pleased to be here, to see him, to have made it, that there was no disguising her pleasure.

But he was frowning at her, and didn't stop frowning. He stared at her for a moment, making her raise her hand self-consciously to her hair to pat it into place, and then seemed to recollect his thoughts and come to himself. "Damn it, Vanessa," he said, harshly, "you shouldn't be here."

It wasn't the welcome she would have liked, nor the best of beginnings, but she defied her instinct to run and took a step closer to him. "You told me to come," she reminded him, patiently.

To her surprise he fell into a chair with a groan and put his head in his hands. "God, this is all messed up." He looked back up at her. "Listen to me, I'm sorry, I'm so damn sorry you got involved in this."

"You said that already," she said, a little less patiently. "And before that, _you_ told me to come. So what am I missing here?"

"I didn't tell you to come." He held up a hand to halt her protest. "I know, you received an email from me. But I didn't send it."

"I did," said a voice somewhere above and to the right of her, and she didn't have to turn to know whom it belonged to. A thrill that was part fear and part exhilaration ran through her at the sound – the imaginary world that she had lived and breathed her entire adult existence had bloomed suddenly to life, and here was the evidence that she had not lost her mind these past few weeks – and she turned to find Damon Salvatore at the top of the stairs.

She stared at him, and couldn't stop staring. "You're real," she found herself saying, and her voice came out so dreamy she blushed. Another figure appeared next to him, another man, tall and dark and absurdly handsome, with the most beautiful green eyes she'd ever seen, and with a shock of recognition she knew instantly who he was.

"Stefan, Vanessa; Vanessa, Stefan," said Damon, eyeing her warily, "I wouldn't get too close if I were you, brother. She stabbed me in the back the last time we met. Literally."

She couldn't help it, she clapped her hand to her mouth to hide her laughter. "I'm sorry! I'm really sorry. I did apologise. And I'm sorry for laughing, it's just that – I still can't believe you're real." Tears of – she didn't know what, relief, joy – sprang to her eyes. Good grief, she was a mess. "These past few weeks...all kinds of thoughts were running around in here." She tapped her temple, shaking her head. "Was I dreaming, was I imagining the whole thing, was I crazy; briefly considered going to see the campus counsellor–"

"Did you?" said Damon, sharply.

"No, no, you warned me not to tell anyone. I didn't. I've kept it out of my research, too, which has been harder than you can imagine–"

"Good," he said, cutting her off. "Keep it that way."

She couldn't stop staring at them. Stefan Salvatore was looking at her in a measuring, scrutinising sort of way, then he nodded and gave her a quick smile – she thought she saw a glimpse of kindness there, but it was gone in an instant – before turning to his brother. "She'll do. Let's get her upstairs and fill her in." He turned and disappeared up the stairs again before she could ask what it was she'd "do" for.

"You heard him," said Damon, and followed.

She turned to Alaric then, belatedly registering the fact that Damon had emailed her, and not him.

"You never wanted me to come," she said, wonderingly, seeing his behaviour tonight with new eyes.

"I didn't," he replied gruffly, getting up out of the chair and taking her arm, leading her up the stairs after the Salvatore brothers. "But here you are. So let's find out exactly what we're getting into so we can keep you alive."

x x x

_What the hell is wrong with this woman?_

Alaric sat in a corner of Stefan and Damon's motel room in the foulest mood he could ever remember being in. He watched Vanessa grumpily as she listened with all the excitement and fascination of a child with a new toy – and all the fear of a potted plant – as Stefan gave her all the background about Klaus, about our running, about the safe house, and as Damon laid out her kamikaze mission for her.

She looked like a damned Enid Blyton character setting off on a grand adventure. What the hell was wrong with her? Did she have a death wish? Alaric hoped to God not. Surely there was enough of that going around.

"So you're going to work with Jeremy. Once we fill the rest in, too. Learn all you can about Elena so you can play her."

"Play Elena?" Vanessa frowned. "I'm not a very good actress."

"Then what the hell have you been smiling and nodding about for the past forty-five minutes?"

"Well...I figured I was going to play myself. Vanessa Monroe. And in our little charade Vanessa Monroe is the doppelganger."

Damon looked aghast. "Why the hell would we do that?"

"Because," said Vanessa, with the tone of patience she'd used with Alaric earlier downstairs, "I'm a really bad actress. I'll almost definitely trip up. I can't pretend to be an entirely different person with different memories."

"You know, she has a point," said Stefan. "Even if she was comfortable playing someone else, I doubt the others would be happy pretending she was Elena. Jeremy's sister, Bonnie's best friend...the whole thing is precarious enough as it is, we don't need to add any unnecessary complications."

"And changing the identity of the doppelganger isn't an unnecessary complication?" Damon shook his head and started to turn away, but Stefan stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"It's one lie compared to a collective charade, Damon, think about it. The witches aren't going to know any better."

Damon looked at Vanessa. "How bad of an actress are you?"

She grimaced. "I've been kicked out of six school plays."

"God help us," said Damon, rolling his eyes heavenward. "Doesn't look like we have much of a choice."

"We can _choose_," Alaric said, "to let her go back home. Leave her out of this."

Vanessa came over to him, putting her hands over his. "Alaric," she said, "I want to do this. I know you're worried, but please, let me do this. It's _my_ choice; this is what I want. I know what I'm doing."

'That's just it, Vanessa. You don't. You've got your head in books and myth and fantasy, and it's all novel and new for you. But this is real life. People have died," he said, unable to gentle his voice, his voice breaking on that last word, his mind shying away from thoughts of Jenna, of Elena. He shook his head. "I'm not on board with this."

"Duly noted, dad," said Damon. "But you're not her keeper, and she's not a child. _She's_ on board with it, and that's all that matters." He yawned. "Look, why don't the two of you go have a heart to heart or whatever – somewhere else."

"That's my brother's charming way of saying it's been a long day," said Stefan, "for all of us. Get some sleep and we'll talk more with the rest in the morning. They're out of rooms, but I guess...you can stay here, if you like. It's just us two."

Alaric saw the appalled expression Damon shot at Stefan, but Damon's horror was eclipsed by his own at the idea. "No," he said, firmly, unconsciously moving closer to Vanessa, "no, she'll stay with us tonight. Tomorrow she can bunk with the girls, or we can get another room."

"Thanks," said Vanessa, smiling at him, the strange, vivid light blue of her eyes catching the cheap fluorescent lighting and shining at him with a brightness that had been absent from his life for what had felt like a long time now. It did something funny to his heart. And as he took the extra pillows Stefan threw at him and followed her out of the room, he knew he was walking into a whole new world of trouble.

x x x

"Some girl, huh?"

"Some girl. Don't know if she's crazy or stupid, or both."

I smiled a little. "She remind you of Isobel?"

"It's fucking creepy."

"Birds of a feather, I guess." I sat on the spot on the bed that Alaric had vacated. "She didn't seem afraid. Maybe she was a little shocky. Think she'll run for the hills when it all sinks in?"

Damon shrugged. "Beats me. But she's had weeks to have it sink in, the fact that this is all real, and if anything it sent her running _to_ us." He smirked at me. "She wasn't afraid of eye-fucking you, I'll tell you that."

"Eye-f...? What?" I laughed. "Come on, Damon, we're like exhibits to her. Research. Museum pieces. She'd sooner stuff me and put me in a display case than eye-fuck me."

"Wouldn't put it past her to do both," he muttered. He rose and came over with a light in his eyes that I was beginning to recognise. "Anyway," he said, "where were we?"

"We were about to go to bed, because we're wiped out."

"I don't disagree about going to bed."

"I didn't think you would," I said, grimacing, feeling like I'd been put through a wringer – physically and emotionally. "I'm too tired, Damon. I'm too tired to play whatever game this is. Talking to Vanessa, talking about Elena...it just brought back too much. I just want to go to sleep, forget about it all for a while."

"I can help you forget."

"So can sleep." I pulled the sheets back and lay down with a huge sigh of relief.

"For you, maybe," he muttered, uneasily, and I wondered again what he'd been dreaming of earlier. He looked down at me, lying comfy on my side of the bed. "Fine, go to sleep, you damn cocktease."

"Now, _that_," I murmured, stretching and settling in, already drifting off, "is something I never thought I would be called. Especially not by you."

His harsh laughter echoed in my mind as I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

What felt like mere seconds later - but must have been hours, judging by the lightening sky - I jumped awake, roused by the sounds of Damon struggling next to me. He was asleep and dreaming, mumbling something, the veins under his eyes swelling and darkening as he tossed and turned underneath the tangled sheets.

"Elena," he was saying. "Stop. please, Elena, please, stop..." His voice was desperate, pained; it almost frightened me, it was so eerie to watch. What the hell was he seeing?

"Damon," I said, taking him by the shoulders and shaking him, "Damon, wake up. You're just dreaming. You're having a bad dream."

His eyes flew open, and there was no reason in their blue depths – still in the grip of the dream he grabbed at my arms and shoved me off him, rolling me onto my back and holding me down painfully, with a forearm thrown across my throat and another on my chest. "Where is she?" he shouted in my face, a demon with crazed reddened eyes. "Where the fuck is she?"

"Damon!" I shouted back, working my arms free and gripping the sides of his face, shaking him a little. "Damon, it was a dream!" His face was ravaged with grief, with anger, and he looked around him as if completely disoriented, completely lost. My own heart wrenched and tears burned behind my eyes – for him, for Elena, for myself.

"Elena – she's – Jesus Christ, Damon, Elena's _dead_. She's dead." It was the first time I'd said it aloud. "She's not here. She's gone. Elena's dead." I was babbling now, tears escaping from my eyes, and now that I'd said it I couldn't stop saying it. Elena was dead. She was gone. She was never coming back.

It was real. We'd never hear her voice again, see her smile, smell that flowery shampoo scent of her hair that used to drive me to distraction. I'd never hold her in my arms, never feel her lips on mine again, never hear her heartbeat, the pulse at her neck, never hear her tell me, in that determined, desperate way of hers, that things were going to be okay, I was going to be okay.

Before I knew what was happening, his lips were pressed to mine, and they were soft - surprisingly soft, surprisingly warm. I was too stunned to react for a moment, and when I did it was to instinctively pull away. With a little growl he pulled my head back to his, taking my lips again, bruisingly, punishingly – it could hardly be called a kiss, but I supposed...Christ, I supposed that was what it was.

"Damon," I said, trying to push him off, and when he didn't budge I grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked it backwards. It was the pain more than my strength that finally got through to him, and he sat up, straddling my lap, elbows on my chest with his head in his hands.

"Damon?"

I reached up and pulled his hands from his face, cradling his cheek in my palm and pushing his face up to meet my gaze. His eyes, crystal blue again, already normally so expressive, were swimming with anger and fear, with a turmoil that he didn't, couldn't put into words, and it sent an ache through my chest to see my brother like this, my invulnerable brother, for whom the world was all playthings. Or so he pretended. It hurt to see him like this.

Control, I was beginning to understand, was as important for him as it was for me. Only for him it was a blessing; for me, a curse. I wanted to give him some of it back. And relieve myself of some of it in the process.

"Hey," I said, bringing my other hand to cup the other side of his face, thumb moving softly over his cheeks. "Hey. I'm here. Tell me what you want me to do. I'm here."

He stared at me for a moment more.

"Tell me, Damon."

His gaze sharpened, and then, slowly, he leaned down and murmured in my ear. "I want you to move against me. Now."

Heart pounding, I lifted my hips slightly, rubbed against him where I knew he could feel it most. "Yeah," he murmured. "Real slow."

It felt good, real good. He was hard against me and the fabric of our jeans added a delicious friction. But it wasn't enough, and he knew it, too. After a few long moments he climbed off me, off the bed. "Take off your clothes," he said, and did the same for himself before going over to the chair by the desk and sitting down on it, naked and completely unself-conscious. Hell, what did he have to be self-conscious about? He was fucking beautiful.

"Come over here. Sit. Facing me," he said, and spread his legs to support my weight when I did.

"Jesus, this is–"

"Here's what you're gonna do," he interrupted. "You're gonna put one hand on yourself. Then you're gonna put your other hand on me. And you're gonna stroke us real slow." He leaned his head back on the wall behind him. "Oh, yeah, just like that." When I couldn't help myself and started stroking us faster, he closed his eyes and groaned. "Now you're gonna rub us together, Stef. Hard."

He was moving his hips a little, up and down, in time with my hands rubbing us both together, rubbing him against me. "Yeah," he breathed, "make it good," his voice hoarse with pleasure as the friction made my hands slick and wet. "Make us both come like this."

I watched his face as I quickened our rhythm, fascinated again by that look of pain-pleasure, those noises that he made, deep in his throat, watched the muscles of his throat tighten as he swallowed; as, in the palms of my hands, different muscles altogether tightened along with them. Christ I was ready. More than ready.

"Make us come, Stef. Now."

With a groan of relief I pumped hard, closing my hands tight around the both of us as every muscle in my body tightened and I froze, spilling myself across his abdomen as I felt his belly clench against my fist as he came hard against me, his hands coming to rest on my thighs, fingers digging into my skin in the throes of his climax.

I leaned my head onto his shoulder, breathing hard, feeling I would never catch my breath. From the rise and fall of his chest like bellows underneath me he seemed to be in the same condition. God knows why, but I had the inane urge to laugh. So I did. A little, just a little. I raised my head, feeling the slick wetness between us as my skin shifted over his. "Better?"

His head was against the wall at his back, and he didn't open his eyes, but his voice was gruff and full of satisfaction when he replied. "Oh, yeah."

"Works every time," I murmured, amusement in my voice. "Or so I've been told."

His lips curled in a small, exhausted smile. "Yeah? Who told you that?"

"Some guy. Blue-eyed madman."

"Sounds like a great guy."

"Not at all. Obnoxious asshole. A real dick, actually."

"Well, hey. Nobody's perfect."

"Gives pretty good head, though."

His smile broadened, and grew into a laugh. A great big belly laugh that died as quickly as it had begun. He took a deep breath, shook his head, looking at the floor, all trace of humour abruptly gone from his face. His voice was quiet. "You want to know why I took that grenade, Stefan?"

"Yeah, Damon. I do."

"It wasn't for you," he said, softly. "I took it for me." He looked up at me. "Because I thought it might kill me."

I said nothing for a long moment, just looked at him, sitting there in the murky grey light of pre-dawn, looking so damn tired and sad.

"You weren't the only one," I said, finally. I remembered how crazy I'd been at the thought that I'd lost him. I wanted to put my hand to his face, wanted to comfort him, push his hair back from his eyes, but somehow the gesture seemed too intimate – which of course was ridiculous given what we'd just done – so I didn't. Instead I said, "I think it was the werewolf blood that brought you back."

He frowned. "Werewolf blood?"

I got up out of the chair and picked up my shirt, pulled it back on, feeling the chill in the air all of a sudden. "Yeah. You were pretty far gone by the time I got back to you, after I'd...finished off the pack. I checked myself for wounds, couldn't find any, and I wondered if it was because of the blood I'd drank from the werewolves. I think it accelerates our healing even more than usual." I sat on the side of the bed. "So I fed you some. And you healed up. And you came back."

He was silent a long time. Then he stood, and spoke as he came slowly back over to the bed. "So it's your fault, huh?"

"My fault." I leaned back on my elbows and watched him moving through the darkness, watched as he came and stood between my legs.

"Your fault I'm still clinging on to my worthless life."

"Guilty."

I was going to say he was my only brother, he was all I had, and I'd keep him clinging on if it killed me, but he leaned over me, arms on either side of mine, trapping me between them and between his chest in front of me and the bed behind me, and I lost my train of thought. He lowered his head till his mouth was inches from mine.

"Damn you, Stefan," he said, and pressed his lips to mine, softly this time.

And as he lay back and gave me fresh instructions in a voice that was suspiciously shaky, oddly gentle - as my mouth moved over his jaw, his throat, down his chest, over his belly and then lower, much lower - and as he held my head like he wasn't ever letting go, I didn't think it was necessary to say anything more.

* * *

x x x


End file.
